The Baobabs
Adansonia Digitata, commonly known as the Baobab Tree, is indigenous to Southern Africa. These trees are the oldest living things on the African continent. In March Arabella travelled to Botswana to get to know more about these magnificent, ancient plants.
“I spent days walking amongst trees, sitting under them and drawing them, absorbing the knowing essence of these strange anthropomorphic plants. Some of the trees are as much as two and a half thousand years old. I studied them from a sapling not even a year old, with only 4 leaves, to one of the most vast and captivating trees, with hundreds of thousands of leaves, know as Chapman’s Baobab. This prophet of a tree, stands near the edge of the Magadigadi salt pans under the protection of Jack’s Camp, my generous hosts.”
Click here to view the collection of Baobab drawings
Botswana
Adansonia Digitata – The Baobab Tree
Sailing across the horizon of time
The prophet of the plains drifts
Our sun is near
Earth burns
She waits
Her promise bruised sky sliced by light ribbons
Heaven’s ice boulders shatter
The Baobab speaks
Guardian of earth’s silence
Knowing her noble truths
For two thousand orbits
Quiet tendrils plait patience, trust and courage into life
A thousand leaf gems catch threads of laughter from smiling webs to weave joy blankets
Earth’s breath strokes limbs between time
Moist kisses butterfly across skin
Moon shadows caress necks
Bark shines
Polished by cycles
Wounded, healed, scarred
Beautified, deified
Bleeding, sucked, weaned
Wounds stitched into flesh
Knitting veins of honesty into earth’s psalms
Ear leaves gather wind stories, giggling, sighing
Suckling root fingers soil creep lapping up earth’s trust
Dancers hang in the canopy
Veiled by perfume of kissed thighs
Crinkled flesh petticoat
Pollen comet headdress
Cream brushed satin invites pursed lips
Seduced by night moths
Pirates of the ship of time
Dangling velvet seals in ochre coats
Heavy tree treasure
Smuggle snow seeds
Cream of Tartar and promises
Desire ripples fertile flesh
Entangled seeing limbs embrace
Vegetal language
Droughts, stabbings, floods and time it’s syntax
Contorted elbows and distended beaks
Swollen organs and soft bellies
Lyrics to melodies
Of lunar shadows and tumbling stars
Of quivering longings and bulging wishes
Baobab
Prophet of the plains
Sails across the horizon of time
Jack’s Camp, Arabella’s hosts for her stay in Botswana,