Giant African baobab trees die suddenly after thousands of years
Some of Africa’s
oldest and biggest baobab trees have abruptly died, wholly or in part, in the
past decade, according to researchers. The trees, aged
between 1,100 and 2,500 years and in some cases as wide as a bus is long, may
have fallen victim to climate change, the team speculated. “We report that nine
of the 13 oldest … individuals have died, or at least their oldest parts/stems
have collapsed and died, over the past 12 years,” they wrote in the scientific
journal Nature Plants, describing “an event of an unprecedented magnitude”.
“It is definitely
shocking and dramatic to experience during our lifetime the demise of so many
trees with millennial ages,” said the study’s co-author Adrian Patrut of the
Babeș-Bolyai University in Romania. Among the nine were
four of the largest African baobabs. While the cause of the die-off remains
unclear, the researchers “suspect that the demise of monumental baobabs may be
associated at least in part with significant modifications of climate
conditions that affect southern Africa in particular”. Further research is
needed, said the team from Romania, South Africa and the United States, “to
support or refute this supposition”.
Between 2005 and 2017,
the researchers probed and dated “practically all known very large and
potentially old” African baobabs – more than 60 individuals in all. Collating
data on girth, height, wood volume and age, they noted the “unexpected and
intriguing fact” that most of the very oldest and biggest trees died during the
study period. All were in southern Africa – Zimbabwe, Namibia, South Africa,
Botswana, and Zambia.
The baobab is the
biggest and longest-living flowering tree, according to the research team. It
is found naturally in Africa’s savannah region and outside the continent in
tropical areas to which it was introduced. It is a strange-looking plant, with
branches resembling gnarled roots reaching for the sky, giving it an
upside-down look. The iconic tree can
live to be 3,000 years old, according to the website of the Kruger National
Park in South Africa, a natural baobab habitat.
The tree serves as a
massive store of water, and bears fruit that feeds animals and humans. Its
leaves are boiled and eaten as an accompaniment similar to spinach, or used to
make traditional medicines, while the bark is pounded and woven into rope,
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