Baobab (HT 2016 283)

Reference ID
HT 2016-283

Scientific name: Adansonia digitata
Family name: Malvaceae
Girth: 4.8 m @ 1 m height
Height: 10.4 m

Location
Singapore Botanic Gardens,
near Melati Gate

The Baobab is an iconic tree native to Africa, known for its bulky, bulbous or bottle-shaped trunk. A mature Baobab may appear to like an ‘upside-down’ tree – a tree pulled out from the ground and replanted with its roots up in the air - especially during the dry season when the tree sheds all of its hand-shaped compound leaves.

The peculiarly-shaped, pendulous flowers of the Baobab flowers open at night, and are pollinated by bats. In its native range, it flowers often, but fruits infrequently.

Once it reaches around 30 or 40 years of age, the trunk begins to swell disproportionately to the size of its crown, often reaching 17 m in girth. The age of the largest Baobabs has been estimated at several thousand years, and some are known to reach about 50 m in girth.

This Heritage Tree is a relatively young specimen, close to 30 years of age at the time of its endorsement in 2016. It is ikely to be one of the few Baobabs that were grown from seed in Singapore, and was transplanted from other areas in the Gardens to this site in June 1996.

For more information on this species, please refer to NParks' Flora & Fauna Web profile here.

Gallery

📷: Hazri Boey