Also 7 bahobab, boabab. [First mentioned by Prosper Alpinus, Hist. Nat. Ægypti (Venice, 1592), ch. xvii., De Bahobab, who speaks of the use of its fruit ‘in Æthiopia’: apparently, therefore, the name belongs to some central African lang.] A tree (Adansonia digitata), also called ‘Monkey-bread,’ and Ethiopian Sour Gourd, with a stem of enormous thickness, found from Senegambia and Abyssinia to Lake Ngami, and long naturalized in Ceylon and some parts of India; considered by Humboldt to be ‘the oldest organic monument of our planet.’ The fibers of the bark are used for ropes and cloth.
1640. Parkinson, Theat. Bot., 1632. This [Ethiopian Sowre Gourd] is very like to be … the Bahobab of Alpinus.
1681. R. Knox, Ceylon, in Arb., Garner, I. 441. There was also a baobab tree growing just by the fort.
1797. Holcroft, Stolberg’s Trav., IV. xciv. 310. The African tree called Barbab [sic], described … by Adanson.
1857. Livingstone, Trav., xxviii. 573. We spent a night at a baobab, which was hollow and would hold twenty men inside.
1866. A. Brown, in Treas. Bot., 18. The fibre [of the bark] is so strong as to give rise to a common saying in Bengal: ‘As secure as an elephant bound with a baobab rope.’
