The Remarkable BaobabAcclaimed historian Thomas Pakenham-who has dramatized in photographs and words the sheer majesty of trees throughout the world-now trains his lens on the most mysterious of trees, the baobab, with spectacular results. His search for the world's most striking baobabs has led him over the last eight years on a trail from sub-Saharan Africa to Madagascar and Australia, the Caribbean, and the United States. Here, in The Remarkable Baobab, Pakenham records his personal encounters with these mysterious giants, tracing their mythologies, their natural grandeur, and their origins, as well as their chances of survival in an uncertain environment. As Pakenham notes, the baobab may indeed be one of the oldest life forms on the planet, and many of the specimens still standing today have been alive for well over a thousand years. Standing tall on the savannahs of Africa and the sunburned plains of Australia, they are tremendous in size and have provided food, medicine, and places of refuge and worship to many, even serving as prisons, tombs, and ossuaries on occasion. Over the last one thousand years they have gained mythical status among many peoples, due in no small part to their appearance-without leaves, the branches of the trees look like roots growing into the sky. The Remarkable Baobab also includes a special section devoted to two famous baobabs in North America-one which is now over twenty feet in girth and is planted on a private Florida estate, the other a breathtaking specimen on the campus of the University of Arizona that was brought to the United States by smugglers. These stories are but two examples provided by Thomas Pakenham in The Remarkable Baobab, a book that is as visually bewitching as the baobab itself. Book jacket. |
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Adansonia digitata Adansonia gibbosa Adansonia grandidieri Adansonia za African baobab all-purpose machete Australia avenue baobab seed baobabs in Africa baobabs rise bark boabs boabs in flower botanists Botswana bottles branches bush Caribbean Chapman Chapman's tree climbed coast redwoods Corbis creature Derby Dinner Tree Dr Baum Duiwelskloof Giant elephantine feet in girth Fitzroy Crossing Gondwana Green's Grove Place hawkmoth Hoedspruit Hoedspruit Giant hollow Ifaty jumbie trees Kassakongo Khubu Island largest baobabs LEFT AND OVERLEAF Leydsdorp Giant Limpopo lower trunk Madagascar Malagasy massive trunk mealie Michel Adanson miles million years ago Morondava mysterious Nicolson Archive octopus trees Olasee Davis once photograph planted pollinate PREVIOUS PAGES Prison realised Remarkable Baobab Remarkable Trees rubrostipa Sagole salt pan seed pods Senegal shape slaves Slurpie South Africa species St Croix Sun City sunset Thomas Baines Thomas Pakenham thorn scrub told tourist town UPSIDE DOWN TREE village Weidenfeld & Nicolson young baobab young tree