Adansonia
Taxonomy

The earliest written reports of baobab are from a 14th-century travelogue by the Arab traveler Ibn Battuta. The first botanical description was in the De medicina Aegyptiorum by Prospero Alpini (1592), looking at fruits that he observed in Egypt from an unknown source. They were called Bahobab, possibly from the Arabic أَبُو حِبَاب abū ḥibāb meaning "many-seeded fruit". The French explorer and botanist Michel Adanson (1727–1806) observed a baobab tree in 1749 on the island of Sor in Senegal, and wrote the first detailed botanical description of the full tree, accompanied with illustrations. Recognizing the connection to the fruit described by Alpini he called the genus Baobab. Linnaeus later renamed the genus Adansonia, to honour Adanson, but use of baobab as one of the common names has persisted.

The genus Adansonia is in the subfamily Bombacoideae, within the family Malvaceae in the order Malvales. The subfamily Bombacoideae was previously treated as the Bombacaceae family but it is no longer recognized at the rank of family by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group I 1998, II 2003 or the Kubitzki system 2003. There are eight accepted species of Adansonia. A new species (Adansonia kilima Pettigrew, et al.), was described in 2012, found in high-elevation sites in eastern and southern Africa. This, however, is no longer recognized as a distinct species but considered a synonym of A. digitata. Some high-elevation trees in Tanzania show different genetics and morphology, but further study is needed to determine if recognition of them as a separate species is warranted. The genus Adansonia is further divided into three sections. Section Adansonia includes only A. digitata. This species has hanging flowers and fruit, set on long flowering stalks. This is the type species for the genus Adansonia. All species of Adansonia except A. digitata are diploid; A. digitata is tetraploid. Section Brevitubae includes A. grandidieri and A. suarexensis. These are species with flower buds that set on short pedicles and that are approximately twice as long as wide. The other species are all classified within the section Longitubae. They also have flowers/fruits set on short pedicels, but the flower buds are five or more times as long as wide.
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