Spooky!
The odd looking Baobab tree grows in Africa, Madagascar and Australia. This forest, as it was called, is in Senegal, West Africa. We had only 10 minutes, if that long, to get our photos. I tried to find a focal point and I guess the focal point here is the row of trees in front. I took about 6 shots, similar to this, sometimes using a particular tree as the dominant element. I wasn’t sure at the time if I’d gotten anything, but I think I did ok. Some of the others placed their friends up against a tree trunk and shot that. I wondered if that ‘snapshot’ pose might not be better than mine. Their photo would show perspective: the tiny person next to the gigantic tree. So, I’ll just tell you, these were big trees!
The Baobab is useful to the people in the area. They make rope from the bark. You can see some rings on the lower trunk on the tree on the extreme left. This is from stripping the bark for rope. I was told the tree was similar to a carrot in structure. The inside is pulpy and can be hollowed out for a hiding place or shelter for man and beast and insects. Maybe because the tree can be used as a hiding place, it got the reputation of a place where spirits live. Or maybe because bats pollenate the flowers, that gave people the willies. I know bats would be enough to make me think the forest was a scary place.
The pulp of the tree can also be used to make a drink, adding water, like lemonade. Or at least these people call it lemonade having never seen a lemon. The leaves can be cooked to provide a good source of vitamin C. And the roots of the tree can be used to make a red dye for fabric.
Don’t you sometimes wonder how all these uses were discovered? It wasn’t in a laboratory. It was in a village somewhere. In a tiny mud hut…who did the discovering? I think it must have been a woman as it would be a woman who tended the cookpot and might have dropped some root into boiling water and noted a pleasing red color…Maybe the same with the lemonade and the cooked leaves. I’ve read that when one person makes a discovery in one part of the world, someone else in an entirely unrelated area makes the same discovery. Most likely it was the same here. Women in villages all over Senegal were discovering the benefits of the Baobab.
The tree can live for thousands of years. You may have seen it in photos from Australia or Madagascar where the trunk is shaped like a bottle. When it looks like this it has stored water in its pulpy core.