Pod Save the Baobab

I don’t recall the moment I first set eyes on a Baobab. Probably because I was too small to have any memory. As a child I never really noticed them. They were just there. The first time I remember being seriously impressed by a Baobab tree was as an 18 year old. Two friends and I took a beaten-up old Range Rover and drove it across Africa (beating it up a whole lot more in the process, but that’s another story). We were in Mali, and were lucky enough to have a few days hiking around the Bandiagara escarpment, beset with Dogon villages and Baobab trees. We came over a blind rise, perspiring freely in the baking midday sun, and there was a gargantuan Baobab tree with an enticing pool of shade spreading below it. As we took shelter under its spreading limbs, I gazed up in wonder at its wrinkled skin and, for the first time, began fully to appreciate this mastodon of the tree world. It was the start of a life-long obsession. Nearly four decades later, there are no signs of the obsession diminishing.

There are lots of obvious reasons to love Baobabs: they are among the most handsome and statuesque of any tree in the world, and their gnarled and wizened presence provides a reassuring continuity in an often fast-changing landscape.

A favourite game of mine has always been to try and imagine the different people and cultures that have assembled over the years in the shade of a particular Baobab tree. The bands of San that laid out their trophies from a day of hunting and gathering, watching contentedly as a small antelope slowly roasts over the fire, emitting ever more enticing smells as the meat cooks. The Rozwi kings and queens examining a delicate ornament of purest gold brought by a neighbouring clan seeking an alliance. A posse of early Portuguese explorers, exhausted after a long day’s march in heavy armour, taking weary refuge from the afternoon sun. An Arab slave trading caravan, a group of Victorian missionaries, the French botanist Michel Adanson, whose efforts are forever recalled in the tree’s Latin binomial, Adansonia digitata. And then, today, a gaggle of tourists gazing up in awe at this extraordinary pachyderm of the plant world.

It’s not just the people who have drawn comfort from a Baobab tree over its lifespan (the oldest Baobab tree ever accurately measured was the Panke Baobab from Nkayi, in north-western Zimbabwe - it came out at a staggering 2,450 years old). Think of all the wildlife that has taken shelter or made its home in and around a Baobab tree. Bees commonly nest high up in the often hollow trunk of Baobab trees, and many Baobabs throughout Africa are scarred with lines of ancient wooden pegs, banged into the side of the tree to enable access to the hive by local honey-gatherers. Vultures and raptors preferentially seek out the upper branches as nesting sites, while hornbills and lovebirds nest in holes in the trunk, waddling awkwardly amongst the branches as they enter and exit their homes. The female yellow-billed hornbill becomes especially familiar with her surroundings when she walls herself into her hole for up to two months while incubating her eggs. During this time she loses all her feathers and is entirely dependent on her mate to feed her through a slit in the mud wall. I shudder to think of the fate awaiting my mate had I been called upon to show such diligence as a provider.

One photo I have never managed to capture has been the image of a leopard draped elegantly across the upper branches of a Baobab. It’s an unforgettable sight, and I’ve been lucky to see it on more than one occasion, but never with camera in hand. Perhaps it’s an image meant for my mind’s eye only. As if the reality of seeing it on paper would spoil the romance. One especially unusual wildlife encounter I signally failed to photograph was when I came across a group of chimpanzees pummelling an unfortunate python with sticks in the shade of a Baobab tree. The Gambian primatologist, to whom I was acting as a spectacularly ineffective 17-year old research assistant, was overcome with emotion at this example of chimp hunting behaviour. My sympathies lay more with the python, who was busily regurgitating a partly digested duiker meal in order to effect a getaway. Sadly the regurgitation took too long and it proved to be the python’s last meal.

Last year, while exploring Liwonde National Park in Malawi, I came across a Baobab tree that had been almost entirely enveloped by a strangler fig. This particular Baobab was rather famous, having once sheltered David Livingstone and his party as they explored the upper reaches of the Shire River. Baobabs are often host to other trees and plants. Michel Adanson, when first describing a Baobab tree in 1749, on the island of Sor in Senegal, called it “a forest in itself”. Epiphytic orchids, lichens and mosses are a common sight on Baobabs, as are the parasitic mistletoes. I’ve seen prickly pears, milkwoods and even a cluster of mother-in-laws tongue (Sansevieria) growing on them. Few other tree species can claim to be as complete an ecosystem as a single Baobab tree.

But beyond all of these (many and compelling) reasons for loving Baobabs, the biggest of all to me is their fascinating symbiosis with us as Homo sapiens. Last year I joined a team of researchers in north-western Zimbabwe, plotting the distribution and health of Baobab trees in the communal lands just east of Hwange. As we walked through homesteads and arable fields, and out into the grazing lands beyond, it quickly became apparent that the greatest concentrations of Baobab trees lay around peoples’ homes. Observers from across Africa have long remarked on the close association between people and Baobab trees, and their distribution is clearly heavily influenced by human settlement.

And it actually makes total sense. The trees are immensely valuable to people, and so people look after them. I’ve rarely seen rural people in Zimbabwe actively planting Baobab trees, but I’ve often seen people actively protecting Baobab seedlings that have naturally emerged. Baobab seeds germinate very easily, and hundreds of tiny Baobab seedlings sprout every year around a fruiting Baobab tree. Without protection, though, they are all almost invariably doomed to die a swift, crunchy death in the jaws of a passing herbivore. But where they’re valued, people will protect them. It doesn’t take much. A thorny branch placed over the seedling is enough to get it through its early years. And it was the “ah-ha” moment of realising that the survival of Baobab trees in Africa depends on their ability to generate cash revenue for rural people that first led me into my journey as a Baobab entrepreneur. It’s an old, but true, adage: “use it or lose it”. And it definitely stands true for Baobabs.

Today I’m a partner in one of African’s biggest Baobab producing companies, and I’m also chair of the African Baobab Alliance, a continent-wide association that supports the development of the Baobab industry. To me it’s all about conserving and protecting these magnificent trees through their sustainable use. Often, in the daily grind of trying to keep a business afloat in challenging conditions, I’m reduced to talking about Baobabs in horribly capitalistic terms : “resource”, “raw material”, “inputs”. I hate having to do that. But then I take a deep breath and remember that it’s for a higher cause. What kills Baobabs is when they get in the way of economic activity. What protects Baobabs is when they become the source of economic activity. And that’s what has been the driving force behind all I’ve done to help commercialise them.

One day my brief time on Earth will be done. When that happens, I’ll be grateful for the many lessons I’ve learned from these incredible trees and proud of what I’ve done to help conserve and protect them. But mostly I’ll be excited for the next stage. Because heaven, surely, is an enormous Baobab forest in the sky.

POD SAVE THE BAOBAB