Sarah Venter’s Baobab Guardians tree planting project had reached its goal of 50 trees and so she believed the project was complete. But it seems the project has other ideas…
2018 April: The Little BIG BAOBAB Book spreads its wings
Inspired by her PhD research on baobab trees, Dr Sarah Venter wans to make the fascinating information usually available only in obscure scientific papers, available to a much broader audience including children. The Little BIG BAOBAB book is for everyone who loves baobab trees…
2016 Oct: Baobab Pollination – become a citizen scientist for a weekend!
Do you live near a baobab tree? Calling all citizen scientists! We need YOUR help to find out how baobab pollination really happens in SA. Join the Baobab Blitz on 18th & 19th November and help us figure out what’s pollinating our Baobab trees. Is it bats? Is it hawkmoths? You could be instrumental in helping us find out once and for all!
2016 Aug: The Little BIG BAOBAB Book
Inspired by her PhD research on baobab trees, Dr Sarah Venter wanted to make the fascinating information usually available only in obscure scientific papers, available to a much broader audience including children. The Little BIG BAOBAB book is for everyone who loves baobab trees…
Dung Beetles and Baobabs
Baobab seeds are relatively large,but it’s not an impossibility that that germinating Baobab seedlings could use the manure buried by dung beetles to boost the growth of its first few shoots!
Famous Baobabs: A Champion of Trees – The Sagole Baobab
Champion trees are nationally listed individual trees which are exceptional examples of their species because of their enormous size, great age, rarity or historical significance. One of the South African champion trees is the Sagole Baobab Tree, located in Vendaland, Limpopo Province, with a trunk diameter of 10.47 metres. It may not be the stoutest of baobab trees (The Sunland and […] Continue Reading
Film maker Greg Cameron: do less, do it better, make it matter more
Recently, Greg Cameron was commissioned by PhytoTrade to make a film on baobabs in which he records the stories of the baobab fruit collectors and how baobab fruit help them improve their lives. Here, Itai Chibiya, PhytoTrade's Monitoring and Research Evaluator is being filmed while being interviewed. EcoProducts was chosen as the site for the interviews. Sarah Venter, the owner of EcoProducts […] Continue Reading
What's in a name: Adansonia digitata
The latin name, Adansonia digitata, was given to the baobab by Carl Linneaus. He named the baobab after the a French naturalist Michel Adanson. Adanson was posted to Senegal in 1749 to research the natural resources of the area. He was blown away by his first sight of a baobab describing it as "a forest in itself”. This description of […] Continue Reading
Nothing goes to waste – it all goes back to Nature!
Absolutely nothing goes to waste when we make our baobab oil and powder. We would potentially have three ‘waste’ products. The first is the shell of the fruit, which is cracked open to remove the power and seed in the primary stage of processing. The second is the seed coat, this is the very hard outer layer of the seed […] Continue Reading
Look honey! I shrunk the baobab tree!
I have never quite understood the appeal of bonsai, so I decided to see for myself what it was all about. I visited Lampies Schoeman who has about 100 trees, surely one of the largest collection of baobab bonsai in the world! He has grown and created most of his bonsai himself over the last 10 years. I always thought […] Continue Reading