Adansonia digitata
Origin: Senegal
Improvement status: Wild
Seeds per packet: ~10
BOTANICAL SAMPLE - NOT GERMINATION TESTED
Life cycle: Perennial
It's no exaggeration to say that humanity was born in the shade of a baobab tree. No doubt our ancestors enjoyed the bounty of the iconic baobab long before we humans even evolved. In the hot sun of the African savannah, the singularly wide trunk of the baobab offers the best shade around, the large fruits and edible leaves offer important nutrition and medicine too, while the very presence of a baobab tree is an indication of groundwater in the area (the trees can retain thousands of gallons of water themselves, which people can tap in a pinch). Baobab trees are the stuff of legend, laden with cultural meaning and power.
Also called "monkey bread tree" (or, more colorfully, "dead rat tree", after the appearance of the hanging fruit), baobabs are perhaps the largest member of the Malvaceae or mallow family, which also includes okra, hibiscus, kenaf, and marshmallow. It's unlikely to survive year-round outdoors in most of the continental US, with the exception of south Florida, south Texas, and California, but it can be grown in a container and brought outside during the frost-free months. Baobabs drop their leaves and go dormant in the winter. EFN co-founder Nate Kleinman kept one alive in a pot for 5 years, after his old friend Eliot Ballard gave him a few seeds from a tree located in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands (also available here, as of this writing).
These seeds were imported from Senegal, where there's a large industry growing baobab for the powdery fruit pulp — which, when it's still in solid form, and not yet reduced to a powder, as the consistency of so-called "astronaut ice cream" — which is primarily used to make a thick sweet-sour beverage popular across the region.
GROWING TIPS: Baobab seeds require no special treatment, but might benefit from being soaked for a day before planting. In our experience, seeds germinate irregularly, some as soon as a few weeks after planting, and some after a few months. Water intermittently.
