Baobab Monograph.pdf - Crops for the Future

Australia and the Victoria River area of Northern Territory. It occurs near
habitation, along seasonal creeks and river plains and persists in open areas
subject to burning.
Every species shows use of the trunks for emergency water supplies and
fruits being eaten by humans.
Until Wickens (1982) discussed the disjunct distribution it had been
explained as a very ancient relic of the flora of Gondwanaland, the Mesozoic
southern continent which later split to form Africa, Australia, Antarctica and
South America (Armstrong, 1977). Wickens, however, stressed the
possibility of water dispersal of fruits and transoceanic dispersal became a
possibility. In a study of the phylogeny of the genus using morphology,
molecular analyses of Adansonia species and comparisons between
Adansonia and closely related genera, the evidence produced ruled out
Gondwanan disjunction but points to transoceanic dispersal (Baum et al.,
1998).
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