Why Are Some of Africa's Biggest Baobab Trees Dying Off?
Baobab trees — ancient, otherworldly behemoths with bulbous trunks that splinter into a constellation of spindly branches — are some of Africa's most iconic living things.
Until late last year, the Platland tree in South Africa, also known as Sunland, was their queen. It was the continent's biggest baobab, at 111 ft. around, 62 ft. high and more than 1,000 years old. It had a cavernous central hollow that hosted a fully functional cocktail bar with seating for 15 people.
Beginning in Spring 2016, the tree began to split apart. By November 2017, it had crumbled completely.
The bar's owners blamed rot caused by heavy rain and threw a barbeque to honor its passing.
But if the Platland's demise was sudden and tragic, it wasn't unique: A new survey of baobab trees across several countries in southern Africa found that most of the two dozen oldest and biggest trees have died or significantly deteriorated in the last decade.
Scientists are wondering what's behind the mysterious die-off — and are looking at climate change as a likely culprit.
"Such a disastrous decline is very unexpected," says Adrian Patrut, a chemist at Romania's Babeș-Bolyai University who organized the survey, published Monday in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Plants. "It's a strange feeling, because these are trees which may live for 2,000 years or more, and we see that they're dying one after another during our lifetime. It's statistically very unlikely."
Patrut began to notice the deaths during a long-term effort to use radiocarbon dating to gauge the ages of major baobabs. Patrut's survey began in 2005 and eventually covered more than 60 trees. Of these, a group of around two dozen stood out for their exceptional size and, or, age. This included the Platland baobab and a few trees that appeared, by Patrut's calculations, to be more than 2,000 years old.
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