Your Garden with Winnie Rukidi

Isobel Thompson had been a missionary in West Africa for 17 years before she became a deacon. She had loved it. She had loved the sense of purpose and the freedom and most of the Africans and she had always supposed that she would stay there all her life, and finally die there, and be buried like David Livingstone’s wife, under a baobab tree.”

That is fiction adopted from a novel by Joanna Trollope called The Rector’s Wife. Now we turn to facts.

The baobab tree, Adansonia digitatais, is a very strange looking tree that looks like it has been grown upside down, with roots hanging in the air. It is named in honour of Michel Adanson, the naturalist who first saw it in Senegal about 1750.

It is the largest known succulent plant that grows in semi-arid areas of Africa and Australia. Its common names are the tree of life, upside down tree, bottle tree and monkey bread tree. It is called the tree of life because it provides shelter to humans and animals. Its trunk grows to 11m in width and stores up to 120,000 litres of water, which people and animals drink during dry seasons. It grows into a giant of 30m in height.

Its leaves are edible and in Nigeria, they are used in the making of Kuka soup.

The fruit is so nutritious, possibly with more vitamin C than the orange.

In Australia, the radio carbon dating has measured the age of some Baobab trees at over 2,000 years old.

For it to die, it rots from inside and suddenly collapses into a heap. Some natives in areas where it grows believe the tree does not die but just disappears.

Coincidentally, as I was reading The Rectors Wife, I received mail from a reader in Kampala who has seedlings of the baobab tree. If you are interested get in touch.

Happy gardening!
winnieruk@hotmail.com