Baobabs may be the oldest life forms on the African continent, and many of the specimens still standing today have certainly been around since the birth of Christ; others for far longer. Carbon-dating experiments in the Zambezi Valley have calculated that trees with a trunk diameter of five metres were over 1000 years of age, and similar experiments elsewhere have dated trees at over 3000 years. Girth measurements themselves are not reliable estimates of a particular tree's age, as the conditions under which it has grown - and the climatic fluctuations of the centuries - strongly affect this.

The baobabs, totaling about a dozen species, are native to the hot dry savannas in Africa, Madagascar and northern Australia. The name baobab is taken from the Swahili language where it is also called the Mbuyu tree. Other African names include Kremetartboom (Afrikaans), Warka (Ethiopian), Murambo (Meru), and umShimulu, isiMuhu and isiMuku (Zulu).