16 November 2019 | New Scientist | 29Tree of life
Photographer Pascal Maitre
MEET Malaindrano, a giant baobab
tree hollowed out to store water.
It grows in Ampotaka, a village in
the Mahafaly plateau region of
Madagascar, where there are
300 baobabs for every 475 people.
Each tree has a name and a family
responsible for protecting it.
Malaindrano means “he who
hates water”. In fact, this baobab
doesn’t hate water at all, but it is
so big many people believe it has
never been completely filled.
Even semi-full, the trees are
a vital store of water in one of
Madagascar’s driest regions.
Also known as bottle trees for
their thick, cylindrical trunks,
such baobabs form a network
of natural water tanks that has
allowed people to thrive in a place
where rain is rare, and where the
porous soil quickly absorbs the
little that does fall.
Lack of rain can lead to famine.
In the 1920s and 1930s, thousands
of people died after extreme
drought. This prompted locals to
come up with an ingenious way to
survive: hollowing out baobabs to
store water in when it is plentiful.
It takes three people around
10 days to scoop out a baobab. The
tree then grows a new inner bark
that stops stored water soaking
away. And it doesn’t rot, as baobab
wood already has a high moisture
content. Larger specimens can
store about 14,000 litres of water.
Today, some 20,000 people live
across the plateau, many of whom
rely on the stored tree water for
around a third of the year. ❚
Bethan Ackerley