Baobab trees mysteriously die in Africa

CROOKS CORNER, South Africa — Africa’s ancient baobab, with its distinctive swollen trunk and known as the “tree of life,” is under a new and mysterious threat, with some of the largest and oldest dying abruptly in recent years.

Nine of the 13 oldest baobabs, aged between 1,000 and 2,500 years, have died over the past dozen years, according to a study published in the scientific journal Nature Plants.

The sudden collapse is “an event of unprecedented magnitude,” the study says.

Climate change, with its rising temperatures and increasing drought conditions, is a suspected factor but no definite cause is known.

“The trees that are falling over are at the southern range of the distribution of baobabs,” said Stephan Woodborne with South Africa’s National Research Foundation, an author of the study. “What we believe is happening is that the climate envelope in which they exist is shifting, and so we are not talking about the wholesale extinction of baobabs.”

Researchers are seeing very few juvenile trees in the affected region while the mature trees are dying off, “so what we are probably looking at here is a shift in their distribution in response to climate forcing,” Woodborne said.

Baobabs stud southern Africa’s hot, dry stretches of savanna and are often in areas roamed by elephants, rhinos and other wildlife. Elephants help to propagate the trees when they eat baobab fruit, with seeds often sprouting in the nutritious elephant dung.

Baobabs store large amounts of water in their trunk and branches, giving the trees their bulbous shape. Large trees can store as much as 37,000 gallons of water sucked up during rainy seasons. Thirsty elephants often strip a baobab of its bark and wood to get their moisture.