A baobab can hold so much water in its swollen trunk that its shape visibly changes with the rainy season. In Africa’s dry savannah, where the climate can be extremely arid, that ability helps explain ...

One of Unguja Island’s ancient baobab trees. Courtesy Wolfgang Alders Unguja Island, in Zanzibar, Tanzania, is part of the cultural region known as the Swahili Coast. The Swahili Coast stretches from ...

Baobabs are sometimes called “upside-down trees”, because their branches look like roots reaching skywards. Of the eight species of baobab in the world, six are confined to Madagascar, one to northern ...

Baobab trees may be a proxy for measuring long-term use of land by humans. They live long, have economic benefits, and are used as shrines and markers on landscapes. Archaeologists have long suspected ...