268 THE NATURALIST IN AUSTRALIA. 
that was photographed in full leaf at the time when the great majority of its 
companions exhibited only bare poles. 
The aspect of the handsome, dark, glossy palmate leaves of the Baobab are 
clearly indicated in the photograph of a full-foliaged tree reproduced in Chapter I., 
Plate V. The flowers are also notable in size and appearance. They are of a 
creamy white hue, and somewhat thick waxy consistence, five-petalled with a slightly 
prolonged tubular calyx, an elongate pistil, and a surrounding sheaf of fine long 
stalked stamens and golden anthers, resembling those of the ordinary Myrtacee. 
At the time of the writer's visits to the North West, the flowering season for the 
Baobab trees had long since passed. By dint, however, of carefully scouring the country 
round, one solitary bloom was, with the kindly assistance of Dr. Ernest Black, 
ultimately secured. A pencil sketch made of it is reproduced below. 
The large ovate fruits or nuts of the Boab tree may be observed scattered among 
the branches of many of the examples figured, but are especially conspicuous in the 
one that forms the subject of the illustration on the next page. A characteristic 
representation of a single nut, illustrating the more normal bluntly ovate contour, is 
also afforded by the engraved example included with the carved shell ornaments 
reproduced on page 10 of Chapter I. This figure delineates the nut on a scale of 
one-fifth of its natural size. 
Boab nuts are found, how- 
ever, to differ to a remark- 
able degree both in shape 
and size even on the same 
tree. Normally they are 
obtusely ovate, five to seven 
or eight inches long, and 
covered externally with a 
thin green felt-like pile. 
They may vary, however, 
from the foregoing normal 
contour in the one direction 
to an elongate acuminate 
and in the other to an al- 
most spheroidal contour, 
W. Saville-Kent, del. ‘ 
FLOWERS OF BAOBAB TREE, Adansonia rupestris, HALF NATURAL SIZE. while the matured nuts may 
