African Baobab Adansonia digitata 10 Seeds (Fast Shipping )

Surely one of
the most unusual trees on earth, the African Baobab is elephant-like in a land
of elephants, with a vastly stocky trunk and humanoid branches. Bears
pendulous, giant, white-winged flowers that sport globular arrays of
yellow-tipped stamens and give way to the velvety, elongated fruits. These
fruits contain a powdery pulp, rich in citric and tartaric acid (also
quercetin), that makes a refreshing, tart, astringent drink.  The young
leaves of the tree are steamed and eaten as a nutritious food.  The
bark is twisted into fiber and used in basketry or rope making. The plant
prefers dry conditions, well-drained soil and tolerates full sun. A rarity in
domestic culture. 

The African
baobab (Adansonia digitata L.) is one of the eight species of baobab (Adansonia)
and the only one native to mainland Africa. Like other baobabs, the African
baobab is a massive deciduous fruit tree, up to 20-30 m high, with a lifespan
of several hundred years. Its swollen and often hollow trunk looks like a huge
bottle and can be as broad as 3-7 m in diameter. It bears short, stout and
tortuous branches and has a thin canopy. Baobab is strongly anchored in the
soil by an extensive and strong root system that grows 2 m deep, and whose diameter
may be higher than the tree height. The leaves are simple or digitally
compound, dark-green on top, and borne at the end of a 16 cm-long petiole. The
leaflets are between 5-15 cm long and 1.5-7 cm broad. The baobab shed its
leaves during the early dry season and new leaves appear after flowering. The
pentamerous flowers are white, large (20 cm in diameter and 25 cm long), and
hang from stalks on pedicels up to 90 cm long. The fruit is a voluminous (35 cm
long and 17 cm in diameter) ovoid capsule with a hard, woody envelope
containing a pulp and black seeds. Once ripe, the fruit envelope becomes
brittle and the pulp takes on a chalky consistency.

The baobab is
mainly used for food. The fruits, flowers, leaves, shoots, roots of seedlings
and even the tree roots are edible. The leaves can be used either fresh, as a
cooked vegetable, or dried and powdered as a functional ingredient (thickener)
of soups and sauces. The flowers, shoots and roots of seedlings are eaten. The
fruits, called monkey-bread, contain a white, mealy, acidic tasting nutritious
flesh that can be eaten as a sweet, used to make refreshing drinks and
ice-creams, or used to adulterate and curdle milk. The seeds yield an edible
and pleasant tasting oil, and oil extraction results in an oil meal. The bark
is used for fiber or as firewood. The roots, that are boiled and eaten in times
of famine, contain tannins that provide a useful red dye. Baobab trees provide
fodder for animals: young leaves, fruits, seeds and the oil meal are consumed
by livestock.  Zones 10 to 12.  

Growing
Instructions

The seeds have
a hard seed coat that has to be treated, or scarified, in order for water to
enter the seeds so that they can sprout.

 Scarify
the large, roundish seeds and plant in warm, sandy soil. Scarify by
rubbing on sandpaper in one spot until the seed coat is rubbed through and the
white pericarp just shows.  Alternately, hold the seed down on a cutting
board with one finger and slice through one end of the seed, thus revealing a
small window through which you will see the white pericarp.  Incomplete
scarification will yield no results–the seed coat must be pierced!

1. To scarify
the seeds, nick or sand the seed coat with sandpaper.  

2. Soak the
seed in warm water for 24-48 hours.

3. The seeds
like moist, well-drained soil. Prepare a mixture of half potting soil and half
sand, perlite or vermiculite. Put the soil in a pot. Water the mixture so that
it is moist but not wet.

4. Put the
seeds on the soil.  

5. Cover the
seeds with a thin layer of soil.

6. Water the
seeds.   

7. Place the
pots in an area with warm temperatures in full sun.   

8. When the
seedlings are a few inches tall, they can be transplanted.