Australian Baobab Tree Botanical Illustrations and Images Down Under

Summary: Australian baobab tree botanical illustrations and images abound with the Australian endemic's distribution ranges, life cycles and physical appearances.

Group of Gouty Stem Trees, Adansonia gregorii F. Muell., on the Baines River, North West Australia (1857 oil on canvas) by English artist and explorer Thomas Baines (Nov. 27, 1820-May 8, 1875); Lynn Museum, King's Lynn, England: Public Domain, via The Athenaeum

Australian baobab tree botanical illustrations and images acclaim the only Australian endemic among nine extant baobab tree species whose other eight members appear natively in mainland Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and Madagascar.

Australian baobabs bear the English common names Australian baobab trees, baobs and boabs and bottle-trees, cream-of-tartar trees and gouty-stems for biogeography, as nicknames and from appearances. They carry the scientific name Adansonia gregorii to commemorate Michel Adanson (April 7, 1727-Aug. 3, 1806) and Sir Augustus Charles Gregory (Aug. 1, 1819-June 25, 1905). Taxonomies in Carl Linnaeus's (May 23, 1707-Jan. 10, 1778) system date to 1857 by Baron Sir Ferdinand Jacob Heinrich von Mueller (June 30, 1825-Oct. 10, 1896).

Western Australia's Derby-area, 1,500-year-old Boab Prison Tree, 1,343 years older than the Mueller explications, epitomizes the elder examples in Australian baobab tree botanical illustrations and images.

Australian baobabs favor floodplain, forest, riverbed and rocky distribution ranges through 984.25-foot (300-meter) altitudes above sea level from Kimberley, Western Australia, eastward into the Northern Territory.

The Boab Prison Tree, 19th-century gathering-place, or not, for gaoling aboriginals before sentencing 3.73 miles (6 kilometers) northward, in Derby, generates a 48.23-foot (14.7-meter) mature girth. Australian baobabs have average 29.53- to 39.37-foot (9- to 12-meter) heights within 16.40- to 49.21-foot (5- to 15-meter) ranges and diameters through 16.40-plus feet (5-plus meters). Bean-like seeds, brown-black gourd-like capsules, brown-gray smooth bark, compound emerald-green leaves and white flowers identify gourd-gourd and sour-gourd tree members of the Malvaceae mallow plant family.

Australian baobab tree botanical illustrations and images juggle root-like branches atop cylindrical, downward-flared trunks atop branch-like rhizomes (from the Greek ῥῐ́ζᾰ, rhíza, "root") and downward-growing roots.

Branches and rhizomes keep Australian baobab bulb-based, tube-like trunks straight and sustainable since they respectively know foliage, flowers, fruits and seeds and rooting, shooting woody offsets.

Australia's 'abū ḥibāb (from Arabic أَبُو حِبَاب, "father of many seeds") lodges 2.56- to 4.73-inch (6.5- to 12-centimeter) by 0.98- to 1.77-inch (2.5- to 4.5-centimeter) leaflets. Australian baobabs, mentioned in northwestern aboriginal languages by the names gadawon, larrgadi and larrgadiy, maintain foliage from November through June and flowers from December through May. Night-opening flowers net 4.33- to 4.72-inch- (11- to 12-centimeter-) long petals in 13.5- to 15-inch (34.29- to 38.1-centimeter) by 1.5- to 2.5-inch (3.81- to 6.34-centimeter) corollas.

Bloom times offer bottom-fused, 1.18- to 2.76-inch (30- to 70-millimeter) anther filaments; sepal-filled, 2.36-inch- (6-centimeter) calyxes (from Greek κάλυξ, kálux, "husk") and stamen-filled, 0.79-inch (2-centimeter) tubes.

Australian baobab tree botanical illustrations and images present 0.39- to 0.43-inch (10- to 11-millimeter) by 0.32-inch (8-millimeter) seeds from 0.39-inch- (10-centimeter-) long, 1.58-inch- (4-centimeter-) wide fruits.

Joseph Henry Maiden (April 25, 1859-Nov. 16, 1925), in 1889, qualified the "dry acidulous pulp of the fruit" as "an agreeable taste, like cream of tartar." Australian baobabs rate reputations for edible, mealy pulp; habitable, water-holding trunks; iron-rich, medicinal leaves; outer fruit surfaces carved or painted by aboriginal artists; and roasted seeds. The Boab Prison Tree, the Gija Jumulu, the Hillgrove Lockup and the Wyndham caravan park tree serve as special Australian baobabs for locals, residents and visitors.

Australian baobab tree botanical illustrations and images team 19.69- to 59.06-inch (500- to 1,500-millimeter) rainfall in 55.4 to 102.2 degrees Fahrenheit (13 to 39 degrees Celsius).

Gija Jumulu, an Australian baobab tree (Adansonia gregorii), was removed from Telegraph Creek, in Western Australia's northernmost Kimberley region to make way for a road bridge on the Great Northern Highway and transported  3,200 kilometers (2,000 mi) southwest to the Wheatbelt region for July 20, 2008, replanting; Gija Jumulu at Two Rivers Lookout, Forrest Carpark, in Kings Park, Perth, Western Australia, southwestern Australia; Sunday, Feb. 5, 2012, 16:53: Moondyne, CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Group of Gouty Stem Trees, Adansonia gregorii F. Muell., on the Baines River, North West Australia (1857 oil on canvas) by English artist and explorer Thomas Baines (Nov. 27, 1820-May 8, 1875); Lynn Museum, King's Lynn, Norfolk, East Anglia, East of England: Public Domain, via The Athenaeum @ https://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/detail.php?ID=165373

Gija Jumulu, an Australian baobab tree (Adansonia gregorii), was removed from Telegraph Creek, in Western Australia's northernmost Kimberley region to make way for a road bridge on the Great Northern Highway and transported  3,200 kilometers (2,000 mi) southwest to the Wheatbelt region for July 20, 2008, replanting; Gija Jumulu at Two Rivers Lookout, Forrest Carpark, in Kings Park, Perth, Western Australia, southwestern Australia; Sunday, Feb. 5, 2012, 16:53: Moondyne, CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Baobab_Kings_Park_Feb2012-5.jpg

For further information:

"Adansonia gregorii F. Muell." Tropicos® > Name Search.
Available @ http://www.tropicos.org/Name/3900667

"Ferdinand Jacob Heinrich von Mueller." Find A Grave > Memorial.
Available @ https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/176287019/ferdinand-jacob_heinrich-von_mueller

Maiden, Joseph Henry. 1889. "7. Adansonia Gregorii." The Useful Native Plants of Australia, (Including Tasmania): 4-5. London, England: Trubner and Co; and Sydney, Australia: Turner and Henderson.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/12453235
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/details/usefulnativeplan1889maid

Mueller, F. (Ferdinand). 1857. "Nova Genera et Species Aliquot Rariores in Plagis Australlæ Intratropicis Superrime Detecta: Adansonia Gregorii." Hooker's Journal of Botany and Kew Garden Miscellany, vol. IX:14. London, England: Lovell Reeve.
Available @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/784897

Pakenham, Thomas. 2004. The Remarkable Baobab. New York NY; and London UK: W.W. Norton & Company.

Wickens, Gerald E.; and Pat Lowe. 2008. The Baobabs: Pachycauls of Africa, Madagascar and Australia. Berlin, Germany: Springer Science + Business Media, B.V.