Adansonia
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Adansonia (commonly known as the "Baobabs") are a genus of deciduous trees found in Africa and Australia. Most baobab populations are declining, with several drastic population deaths starting in the early 21st century with no confirmed cause, though drought is suspected. This page follows Baum's 1995 genus revision, which divides the genus into 8 species.
- Adansonia digitata, native to continental Africa, and introduced in several other countries including Madagascar. Vernacular "African Baobab".
- Adansonia grandidieri, the "giant baobab", native to west central Madagascar
- Adansonia gibbosa (syn. A. gregorii), native to Western Australia
- Adansonia madagascariensis, native to north Madagascar
- Adansonia perrieri, native to North Madagascar
- Adansonia rubrostipa, native to central - south Madagascar
- Adansonia suarezensis
- Adansonia za
Media
Assessment (January 2023): Wikimedia Commons files depicting Adansonia include full-organism photos, detail photos, orthogonal line drawings, simple and full environmental illustrations, and SVG icons. Some available images are not identified down to the precise genus/species. For some species like the more famous A. grandidieri, a good variety of files exist across a wide range of free licenses, but in the case of other species like A. suarezensis, no illustrations can be found and only five photos are present in the project. In the most extreme case, A. perrieri, no category for the tree can be found in the project, and its single photo is of bark detail and not a full tree.
OpenTaxa created variants from some public domain botanical illustrations for species in this genus, cleaning up stray pixels and masking the white background for use in other projects that require transparency. Examples (such as this fruit and this branch) can be found in the Commons categories for Adansonia botanical illustrations. These may be released in a future OT pack if enough are collected.
Notably, and especially in the case of the Australian trees in this genus, "Baobab" may not be the most common name used locally - variants such as "Boab" or "Boabab" are common, and many search results in sites such as Museums Victoria's collections are behind these terms. Some projects may still use outdated genus taxonomy.
In Sketchfab, there are three accurate, freely licensed models of Adansonia trees. Two are high poly and depict A. digitata, the african baobab, and one is a low-poly stylized scene including a tree most closely resembling A. grandidieri, the giant baobab. All are licensed as CC-BY. Their original Sketchfab links are below. The scene including a low-poly baobab has also been remixed into a new model release by us - The geometry has been cleaned up, scaling fixed, and textures were painted to replace the flat colour shading of the original. This release is licensed as CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Two updates to this original release were made in April 2022: An alternate set of retro textures was created for our model, and from this model, we created a series of pre-rendered assets for use in 2D projects. Isometric, top-down, and profile views of the tree were created, including isolated canopies, isolated trunk w/ canopy shadow, isolated shadows for canopied and leafless versions, leafless trees and canopied trees, both with and without shadows baked in. Relevant images have versions from all 4 directions. In total, 100 renders were included in this release.
OpenTaxa Commissions
OpenTaxa has commissioned a set of Adansonia 2D sprites, released under free licenses: https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-baobabs
These were created by Bluecarrot16 and include 7 species, with variants for leaf-less trees, separated shadows, sourcefiles, etc.
OpenTaxa releases
- Low-poly A. grandidieri model
- Low-poly A. grandidieri pre-rendered assets: isometric, top-down, and profile views
3D Models (third party)
Wikimedia Commons
Files on the Adansonia category at Wikimedia Commons- 1735 illustrations of A. digitata branches and fruit are included in De Plantis Aegypti 1735, listed on our Index of Works. These are also included in the relevant category on Commons.
Further reading
- As of March 2022, A. digitata has not been assessed by the IUCN yet, but its numbers are believed to be declining.
- Read the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species page for Adansonia grandidieri
- Read the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species page for Adansonia gregorii
- Read the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species page for Adansonia madagascariensis
- Read the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species page for Adansonia perrieri
- Read the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species page for Adansonia rubrostipa
- Read the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species page for Adansonia suarezensis
- Read the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species page for Adansonia za