African Baobab Adansonia digitata 10 Seeds

Surely one of the most unusual trees on earth, the African Baobab is elephant-like in a land of elephants, with a vastly stocky trunk and humanoid branches. Bears pendulous, giant, white-winged flowers that sport globular arrays of yellow-tipped stamens and give way to the velvety, elongated fruits. These fruits contain a powdery pulp, rich in citric and tartaric acid (also quercetin), that makes a refreshing, tart, astringent drink. The young leaves of the tree are steamed and eaten as a nutritious food. The bark is twisted into fiber and used in basketry or rope making. The plant prefers dry conditions, well-drained soil and tolerates full sun. A rarity in domestic culture. The African baobab (Adansonia digitata L.) is one of the eight species of baobab (Adansonia) and the only one native to mainland Africa. Like other baobabs, the African baobab is a massive deciduous fruit tree, up to 20-30 m high, with a lifespan of several hundred years. Its swollen and often hollow trunk looks like a huge bottle and can be as broad as 3-7 m in diameter. It bears short, stout and tortuous branches and has a thin canopy. Baobab is strongly anchored in the soil by an extensive and strong root system that grows 2 m deep, and whose diameter may be higher than the tree height. The leaves are simple or digitally compound, dark-green on top, and borne at the end of a 16 cm-long petiole. The leaflets are between 5-15 cm long and 1.5-7 cm broad. The baobab shed its leaves during the early dry season and new leaves appear after flowering. The pentamerous flowers are white, large (20 cm in diameter and 25 cm long), and hang from stalks on pedicels up to 90 cm long. The fruit is a voluminous (35 cm long and 17 cm in diameter) ovoid capsule with a hard, woody envelope containing a pulp and black seeds. Once ripe, the fruit envelope becomes brittle and the pulp takes on a chalky consistency. The baobab is mainly used for food. The fruits, flowers, leaves, shoots, roots of seedlings an