Trembling Giants  Adansonia digitata (Baobab)

It's a strange giant with branches that look like roots reaching up to the sky. Bushmen legend tells how, in a frivolous mood, the gods tossed the baobab to the Earth below where it landed.  Wrong side up.  Bushmen still believe that the baobab doesn't grow like other trees, but crashes to the ground fully grown. 

The African baobab tree is known as the tree of life; it is capable of storing life-saving water during the drought season which is vital to local nomadic people who may not have any other means of obtaining water. Large baobab trees are said to contain more than 30,000 gallons of water; to access this water, the Kalahari bushmen use hollow pieces of grass (much like a straw) to suck the water out.

The baobab tree is a vital nutrition source for many local tribes; the fruit of the baobab tree contains both pulp and seeds which are eaten. The pulp can also be mixed with water and made into a drink; the seeds of the baobab tree can be eaten alone or mixed with millet. The seeds can also be traded for the extraction of the oil or eaten in a paste; seedlings and young leaves are eaten like asparagus or are used in salads.

The hollow trunk of the tree (either aged naturally or through human intervention) is a place where native people have stored grain, water or livestock. The size of some baobab trees is so great that natives have used the hollow of the baobab tree trunk in which to live.

The medicinal uses; the baobab tree is high in vitamin C and calcium and therefore the leaves and fruit are eaten to protect against illness. The bark of the African baobab tree is used to treat fever; its medicinal use was considered to be of such value that Europeans used the bark in place of cinchona bark (from where quinine was obtained) to protect against malaria.

The inner workings of the tree provide a fiber which indigenous people have used to make cloth, rope, nets, musical instrument strings and waterproof hats. The bark of the baobab tree has to be removed to obtain the fiber; the baobab tree can regenerate the loss of bark if it is cut away.

Superstition surrounds the tree. It develops a hollow trunk said to be inhabited by spirits who haunt anyone foolish enough to cut it down. It’s revered as a repository for ancestral souls and the community’s spiritual power. Some believe that if you pick a flower from a baobab, you will be eaten by a lion; but if you drink water in which a Baobab’s seeds have been soaked, you’ll be safe from a crocodile attack.

Baobabs are hard to kill. They can be burnt and stripped of bark but quickly regenerate. When they do die, they rot from the inside and suddenly collapse with great noise, leaving behind only a heap of fiber. Many believe that they don’t die at all, but simply disappear as mysteriously as they arrive.

"People look at a tree and think it comes out of the ground, that plants grow out of the ground, but if you ask, where does the substance [of the tree] come from? You find out ... trees come out of the air!" -Nobel laureate Richard Feynman