Note 108 — Chapter XII

Adansonia digitata. These are tall trees, whose timber is of a spongy consistency. Sir S. Baker mentions one which was about forty feet in circumference. He wrote: “The Adansonia digitata, although a tree, always reminds me of a gigantic fungus; the stem is disproportioned in its immense thickness to its height, and its branches are few in number, and as massive in character as the stem. The wood is not much firmer in substance than cork, and is as succulent as a carrot.” (“The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia,” p. 356.)