Have you hugged a tree today?

During the last week in October, I took a short field trip with my host, Glynis, and our Master's student, Ronie, to collect fresh leaf tissue from baobab trees (Adansonia digitata) in northern Limpopo. We are working on a project to determine why some trees produce many fruits (several hundred) and others produce very few (maybe 5 fruits in a year). I have my suspicions, but the data have yet to be fully analysed.

 Baobab trees are massive and rank among the oldest living plants in the world. They can live for thousands of years and huge ones that we visited were only a couple hundred years old. 

 This is an interesting baobab-- thought to be the type species of a second mainland African baobab, Adansonia kilima. I'm not convinced.

Adansonia digitata growing on the roadside.

Sarah is on the roof of the truck trying to clip a few leaves for our study. Ronie, Mike, and Glynis (from left to right) look on.

Massive in size, but also gnarly. It was hard to not hug every tree we stopped at.

That's Ronie, climbing into a baobab to check it out. 

Many of the trees grow in villages, often in yards. Thankfully Sarah not only speaks the local language, but has been working with the people for years and we were able to sample their trees.

The world's oldest living angiosperm. This baobab is ~1600 yrs old. The hollow inside can hold about 30 people. 

This is BF6, my favorite tree. You can see BF6's vertical truck scars from elephants raking their tusks up the trunk. Elephants haven't been in that area for over 75 years. 

Road blocks come in all shapes and sizes.

A fig tree! I forget which species, but it took me a few seconds to realize that this was, in fact, a real live tree growing over a rock. Miss you, Moe!

After a long day of visiting baobabs, we stayed at Kruger Park's most northern gate at the Parfuri River camp. Sarah's husband, Casper, informed us that malaria hadn't really taken off yet in that area, so we should be fine. This site is only a couple kilometers from the Zim border.

Our lovely accommodation for the night! Each tent was equipped with two twin beds and a nightstand. These tents also provide endless nighttime entertainment for the resident bushbabies. A few thought it was great fun to scream, jump onto my tent and slide down the slide, and then repeat. Needless to say, it was a very sleepless night on the river. And thankfully, not a single mosquito made an appearance.

On the way back to Louis Trichardt, we took a detour to look for my plants. Along this route, we stopped to see how Oprah's school was going. The school is about 40k's from the nearest town. That is one remote school house.