The oldest and biggest angiosperm trees in the world, the African baobabs, are dying or already dead, an international team of scientists has found.
The scientists added that the spate of deaths, described in the journal Nature Plants, might be the result of a changing climate – though they say that research needs to be done to confirm or deny that idea.
The baobab known as Adansonia digitata L. is an icon of the African savannah. With wide, cylindrical trunks and gnarled branches, the trees appear to have been yanked out of the ground, flipped over and shoved back in, roots in the air. These giant plants are the largest and longest-living angiosperm (or “flowering”) trees today, with some individuals surviving for close to 2,000 years.
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