Updated 29/5/2000

I don't know whose tourist book was published first, but all the books basically say the same things. The Baoba seldom grows taller than 70 foot (21m) but round the base of its trunk it can measure more than 30 foot (9m). Folk tales have it that the devil was displeased with the Baoba tree, so he uprooted it and planted it back upside down, which is why its branches look like roots.

As it grows older it shrinks like humans (the only tree to do this) and some examples are estimated at 1000 years old.

There are examples all over The Gambia, the fruits hang down like Christmas decorations and are harvested by man or in the wild by monkeys giving the tree the slang name 'monkey bread tree'

The shell of the fruit is used as a container, the seeds can be used as a fertiliser, the leaves are eaten fresh or dried, the white sweet smelling flowers are used at festivals, the bark is carved and the under bark can be made into rope or woven into a fabric, it also is reputed to have similar properties to quinine and is steeped in water and drunk or chewed to fend off malaria.

An oily mixture is also made that can be rubbed into the skin as a protection against the sun an insect bite soother and general skin toner.

With age the massive trunk often becomes hollow and can store large quantities of water, where the trunk has been opened the space can be used as a shelter and in the past this was sometimes used as the final resting place of that group of people who remembered and told or sung the oral history of the people - the Griots.

Many Baoba trees have wild bees nests in their hollows covered with a piece of timber, the nest is smoked to make the bees less active, the timber is lifted and the honey filled comb removed. Others have small shrines concealed in their hollows and local people come to pray after weddings that the marriage will be blessed with children.

Of all the trees in the Gambia it could be argued that the Baoba is the most versatile and in many ways, because of its unfamiliar shape the most striking. Its importance cannot be questioned - every guide book illustrates and describes the Baoba tree.