The genus is honoured to the French naturalist Michel Adanson (1727-1806) the specific name is the Latin adjective “digitatus, a, um”= equipped with fingers, with reference to the shape of the leaf.Ĭommon names : African baobab, baobab, cream-tartar tree, dead-rat tree, monkey-bread tree, Senegal calabash, upside-down tree (English) apebrood- boom, kremetart (Afrikaans) baubab, hamaraya (Arabic) hou mian bao shu (Chinese) adansonie d’Afrique, baobab africain, baobab de Mahajanga, baobab de Mozambique, calebassier du Sénégal, gros mapou, pain de singe (French) Affenbrotbaum, Afrikanischer Baobab (German), baobab (Italian) baobaba, baovola, bozobe, boy, boringy, mboio, mboy, rainiala, reniala, ringy, sefo, vanoa, vontana (Malagasy) baobá, imbondeiro (Portuguese) baobab del África (Spanish) mbuya (Swahili).
Frequent in Kenyan savannahs, Adansonia digitata loses the leaves in the dry season © Giuseppe MazzaThe species is native to Africa (Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo and Zimbabwe) and Madagascar, where it grows mainly in the arid to sub-humid savannahs, with 2 to 6 months rain season and annual average temperatures from 20 to 30 ☌, from the sea level up to about 1500 m of altitude.