unbearable...


Whoever knew: baobabs have blossoms!

What this means is, I never knew. I have been all over the length and breadth Africa for the past 20 years, and I have admired countless numbers of these wonderfully strange yet majestically grand arboreal beasts all over the continent. And not until I made Togo last year did I ever see -- or notice -- one of these trees in blossom.

What joy that my eyes have now been opened to them! They are incredibly beautiful, achingly lovely. One first notices the colors: a firey display of reddish pink tinges their outer edges, with nuanced gradations flaming down the lengths of their slender and delicate bodies. They are frilly and brazen, these floral coquettes. What baobabean lusts they must inspire!

So far I have only seen the blossoms appearing on small trees. Trees that, in their youth, are not immediately recognizable as baobab. It makes me wonder, perhaps it is only the young that may display them?

Perhaps the elders find such beauty unbearable.

Lomé, Togo, October 2008.

Rapid Omega 100, 90mm with "Auto Up No. 2", Neopan 400.