African baobab

Uses
Fiber from the bark is used to make rope, baskets, cloth, musical instrument strings, and waterproof hats. While stripping the bark from the lower trunk of most trees usually leads to their death, baobabs not only survive this common practice, but they regenerate new bark.

Fresh baobab leaves provide an edible vegetable similar to spinach which is also used medicinally to treat kidney and bladder disease, asthma, insect bites, and several other maladies. The tasty and nutritious fruits and seeds of several species are sought after, while pollen from the African and Australian baobabs is mixed with water to make glue.

Flowers and Fruit
The Baobab tree has large whitish flowers which open at night. The fruit, which grows up to a foot long, contains tartaric acid and vitamin C and can either be sucked, or soaked in water to make a refreshing drink. They can also be roasted and ground up to make a coffee-like drink.

The fruit is not the only part of the Baobab that can be used. The bark is pounded to make rope, mats, baskets, paper and cloth; the leaves can be boiled and eaten, and glue can be made from the pollen.

All Baobabs are deciduous trees ranging in height from 5 to 20 meters. The Baobab tree is a strange looking tree that grows in low-lying areas in Africa and Australia. It can grow to enormous sizes and carbon dating indicates that they may live to be 3,000 years old.

One ancient hollow Baobab tree in Zimbabwe is so large that up to 40 people can shelter inside its trunk. Various Baobabs have been used as a shop, a prison, a house, a storage barn and a bus shelter. The tree is certainly very different from any other. The trunk is smooth and shiny, not at all like the bark of other trees, and it is pinkish grey or sometimes copper coloured.

When bare of leaves, the spreading branches of the Baobab look like roots sticking up into the air, rather as if it had been planted upside-down. Baobabs are very difficult to kill, they can be burnt, or stripped of their bark, and they will just form new bark and carry on growing.

When they do die, they simply rot from the inside and suddenly collapse, leaving a heap of fibres, which makes many people think that they don't die at all, but simply disappear.

An old Baobab tree can create its own ecosystem, as it supports the life of countless creatures, from the largest of mammals to the thousands of tiny creatures scurrying in and out of its crevices. Birds nest in its branches; baboons devour the fruit; bush babies and fruit bats drink the nectar and pollinate the flowers, and elephants have been known to chop down and consume a whole tree.

A Baby Baobab tree looks very different from its adult form and this is why the Bushmen believe that it doesn't grow like other trees, but suddenly crashes to the ground with a thump, fully grown, and then one day simply disappears. No wonder they are thought of as magic trees.

There are giant "fat men" among other types of trees. For example, in Mexico there is a giant Mexican taxodium known as the Thickest Tree: Thule Tree "Thule Tree". Its trunk diameter is 11.62 meters. It was believed that such a giant was formed from several tree trunks. But DNA analysis confirmed that its trunks have the same genetic code, which means they are a single organism. The giant is more than one and a half thousand years old. Its popular name is "the tree of life", because by looking closely at its bark, you can distinguish figures of various animals.

In the photo: Mexican taxodium, "Thule Tree" in the Mexican city of Santa Maria del Tule in the state of Oaxaca.

The fattest tree in the world: the chestnut of a hundred horses

The common chestnut growing near Mount Etna in Sicily has a trunk with a diameter of 20.4 meters and a crown area of ​​64 meters. All this was accumulated by him for 4000 years. The giant bears the name "Chestnut of a hundred horsemen", according to legend, he sheltered a hundred knights on horseback from bad weather. The giant's trunk consists of five fused trees. For the gigantic crown area, the chestnut is listed in the Guinness Book of Records. In the photo: Chestnut of a hundred horsemen in Sicily.

There are also unique "mammoth trees" - sequoiadendrons. The most famous of them - "General Sherman", 84 The thickest tree: sequoiadendron "General Sherman" meters in height, with a diameter of 11 meters and a crown circumference - 31.3 meters. The estimated volume of its timber is 1487 m3, weight - 6 tons. In Mexico, sequoia grows, not as massive as sequoiadendrons, but surpassing them in diameter - more than 35 meters. Outwardly, it consists of several trunks, but the analysis showed that the tree is one.

In general, sequoias are considered one of the tallest trees in nature, growing 50-80 meters in height, with a trunk diameter of up to 8-10 meters. There is a description that a giant tree with a trunk diameter of 36 meters existed on the American continent. There is a known case when such a tree fell, blocking the highway. They were forced to build a tunnel through. Thanks to such a colossal cross-section of the trunks, small cafes and even dance floors are set up on the stumps of felled trees. Another record for this type of tree is that they have an unusually thick bark - 60-70 centimeters. They live for several thousand years, but gradually die out, only no more than 500 specimens survived.

The largest of its representatives described had a trunk diameter of about nine meters. And among the record holders, a baobab was recorded, whose trunk had a girth of 54.5 meters. This is an extremely unusual tree. It is not only its size that amazes, but also its proportions. With a trunk size of ten meters, it grows to a height of only 20 meters. These trees are unusually tenacious, quickly recover from damage to the bark and can grow for hundreds of years with a completely decayed core.

Photo: Baobab prison in Australia. The tree was used as a temporary prison at the end of the 19th century.

The thickest tree: toilet baobab The trunk of the baobab at the top splits into smooth, thick branches that form a crown with a diameter of up to 40 meters. Its core is very loose, subject to rapid destruction under the influence of fungi. The result is large hollow barrels, any of which could accommodate up to 30 people. Local aborigines use them as pantries for storing grain, reservoirs of water and for other purposes. In Kenya, one of the baobabs is equipped as a haven for travelers, in Zimbabwe - as a bus station with a waiting room for 40 people, in Botswana - as a prison. In the center of Africa, in a 6,000-year-old tree, there is a bar that is very popular with tourists.