My mother's boab is doing well.

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While we were in our home town recently we visited my brother who still lives in the house where my parents lived when they left the farm some decades ago. Mum had a boab tree on the farm of which she was very proud. She also had one in Narrogin and it is now starting to look like a true boab. Boabs are rarely seen in the south of Western Australia but are found in the Kimberleys and Northern Territory. The base of the boab swells to the point where one was once used as a temporary jail. Mum would have been thrilled to see her little boab growing so well although it has a long way to go yet before the base swells properly. The botanical name is Adansonia gregorii. It is the only boab or baobab to occur in Australia. There are six species in Madagascar and another two are found in mainland Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. They may reach 15 metres in height and trunks can have a diameter of over five metres. Not surprisingly it is sometimes called a bottle tree.