TRAVEL TUESDAY 446 - MADAGASCAR

"Nature doesn't need people - people need nature; nature would survive the extinction of the human being and go on just fine, but human culture, human beings, cannot survive without nature." -  Harrison Ford

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Adansonia grandidieri is the biggest and most famous of Madagascar's six species of baobabs, all in the Malvaceae family. It is sometimes known as Grandidier's baobab or the giant baobab. In French it is called Baobab malgache. The local name is renala or reniala (from Malagasy: Reny ala, meaning "mother of the forest"). This tree is endemic to the island of Madagascar, where it is an endangered species threatened by the encroachment of agricultural land.

Grandidier's baobabs have massive, cylindrical, thick trunks, up to three meters across, covered with smooth, reddish-grey bark. They can reach 25 to 30 m in height. The crown is flat-topped, with horizontal main branches. Leaves are palmately compound, typically with 9 to 11 leaflets. This is the only species of baobab with leaflets that are blueish-green and that are densely covered with star-shaped hairs.

It is a flowering tree, producing flowers that are made up of 5 (sometimes 3) calyx lobes that are bent back and twisted at the base of the flower. The lobes are fused at the base forming an open cup about 1 cm deep. Petals are white, aging to yellow, up to 20 mm long and about 5 times as long as broad. The fruits are large, dry and rounded to ovoid. They have a hard shell 2 – 4.5 mm thick and are covered with dense reddish-brown hairs. They contain large (12-20 mm long) kidney-shaped seeds within an edible pulp.

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