Baobab: The Tree of Life

A millennial giant of arid African lands, the baobab fascinates with its resilience. Its oil, cold-pressed from its seeds, intensely nourishes dry skin and restores its suppleness and comfort. The generosity of the arid, in a bottle. This sheet details its lipid profile, its uses, and its place among great nourishing plants.

The baobab belongs to the botanical genus Adansonia, which includes eight referenced species worldwide. Six are endemic to Madagascar — among them the majestic Adansonia grandidieri and the rare Adansonia perrieri —, one grows in Australia, and only one, Adansonia digitata, extends across almost all of Africa, from Senegal to the eastern savannas. It is from its seeds that baobab oil is pressed.

Its appearance is unique. The massive trunk can exceed ten meters in circumference and store thousands of liters of water to get through the dry season — a reservoir that allows it to live for several centuries, sometimes more than a thousand years. The tree rises up to twenty-five meters, more slender in the most arid zones. Its large white flowers open at night, pollinated by bats and savanna insects, before giving way to the fruits — the famous "monkey bread," whose dried pulp becomes a tangy powder. The palmate leaves, which gave rise to the species name digitata, complete its silhouette.

In both French and English, it is nicknamed the "tree of life"; it is also called the upside-down tree, as its branches evoke roots pointing skyward. Traditionally, almost everything from it is harvested: the leaves are cooked as vegetables, the bark provides fibers, and the fruit pulp is reduced to powder for drinks. But it is its discreet seed that interests cosmetics: a concentrate of fatty acids inherited from this colossus born to resist drought.

After flowering, the baobab tree produces large, oval fruits called "monkey bread." Their naturally dry, white pulp can be reduced to a tangy powder, which is very present in African food culture—from Senegal to the Sahel, where the tree has nourished people and animals for centuries. Inside the fruit are the seeds: it is by cold-pressing them, outside the rainy season, that this precious fatty oil is obtained. It takes many seeds to produce a few milliliters, which explains its value.

In other climates, the tree is grown as an ornamental plant: in France, it is often grown in pots or conservatories, where it forms a small decorative specimen shaped over the years. Depending on the age of the specimen and the harvest period, the seed's composition varies slightly, but it is always the cold-pressed fatty oil that remains the most sought-after part in cosmetics.