178 THE HUMAN SIDE OF TREES 



ground. Its trunk was forty-eight feet around, 

 and had a staircase built in a hollow portion. The 

 Dragon Tree fell in 1867. 



A most curious growth is the baob, baobab or 

 monkey bread tree (Adansonia Oregona). It flour- 

 ishes in various parts of the world, but is especially 

 prolific in the Kimberley district of northwest Aus- 

 tralia. The natives there call it the bottle or gouty 

 tree, because of its tremendously enlarged trunk. 

 It starts out in life slender enough but takes on 

 a surprising girth with the years (much as if it 

 had been addicted to the bottle). Sometimes the 

 stem is almost spherical like a turnip. Trees only 

 ten or twelve feet high may have trunks 70 or 80 

 feet in circumference. The branches extend for a 

 distance of 50 or 60 feet and form the base of a 

 hemisphere of verdure 150 feet in diameter and very 

 pleasing in texture. Occasionally, the immense 

 trunks grow in pairs. With their exposed knotty 

 roots, they suggest to the imaginative mind some 

 huge, double-headed octopus. 



The wood composing these immense trunks is 

 soft and spongy and filled with a mucilage-like sap. 

 In time of drought, the fibre is fed to cattle because 

 of the large amount of moisture it contains. When 

 a baobab is cut down, a new tree frequently arises 

 from the prostrate trunk. 



