On Jan. 15, 2025, the manager of a Facebook page named RENK RENK published a post (archived) featuring a purported photo of four people standing in front of a massive baobab tree. The post showing the large baobab tree displayed over 2.9 million reactions, 97,000 comments and 200,000 shares.
The text of the post with the picture read, “The baobab tree, commonly known as the ‘Tree of Life,’ is indigenous to the African continent, as well as certain regions of Australia and Madagascar, and is capable of living for thousands of years. Its scientific name, Adansonia digitata, honors the French botanist Michel Adanson, who documented this remarkable tree in the 18th century.”
I first noticed the post about the baobab tree photo in my personal Facebook news feed. I then attempted verify the picture’s rumored authenticity and the post’s informational accuracy.
As of this writing, I concluded the baobab tree photo likely originated as the product of an artificial-intelligence (AI) tool. In other words, all the data I analyzed indicated the picture was fake. I uncovered no evidence of other pictures depicting alternate camera angles of the very same large baobab tree. Further, a Google reverse-image search located the image displayed in numerous social media posts, but none predated May 2024.
While the photo itself remained highly questionable, at best, the information in the Facebook post reflected factual information.
In this story, I documented my analysis of the baobab tree picture, published several genuine photos of the giants and researched their history in old newspapers.
Analyzing the Baobab Tree Photo
Two X users shared the earliest baobab tree picture posts I found, on May 6, 2024. Older posts sharing the image may exist.
A user named Abidjan Post (@Abidjanpost225) typed their post in the French language. The text translated to English as, “Very sincerely I doubt the veracity of this story, where Soundiata KeĂŻta uprooted this baobab, given the lying stories that these people spread all day long.”
In the second post, the user Rhissa Ag (@AgAnchawadje) also said, originally in French, “If you believe in the authenticity of the legend that Sundiata uprooted this giant #baobab, it is because you also believe in the flawless capacity of the inter-Malian dialogue to resolve the problems of Mali. Sorry friends, it’s not me, it’s history!!! I don’t know.”
A scan of the photo with the wasitai.com website displayed the result, “We are quite confident that this image, or significant part of it, was created by AI.”
Meanwhile, the sightengine.com website similarly concluded an 89 percent score for the likelihood someone generated the picture with AI. The result read, “Likely AI-generated.” Generally, AI-detection websites exist as a helpful additional tool to gauge authenticity but in no way guarantee accuracy in their results.
Real Photos of Baobab Trees
A search of the Flickr.com website located numerous examples of genuine baobab tree pictures. I embedded three below.
I also encourage viewing two other images in which users disabled the embed function.
Researching the Baobab Tree
The managers of the Kruger National Park website in South Africa published, “Baobab [Adansonia digitata] Other names include boab, boaboa, tabaldi, bottle tree [and] monkey bread tree. The Baobab Tree is also known as the upside-down tree.”
The page’s authors added, “All Baobabs are deciduous trees ranging in height from 5 to 20 meters. The Baobab tree is a strange looking tree that grows in low-lying areas in Africa and Australia.” As for the lifespan, the authors wrote, “Baobab trees can grow to enormous sizes and carbon dating indicates that they may live to be 3,000 years old.”
The editors of Brittanica.com also published information about baobab trees, including their many purported uses:
All baobab species are extensively used by local peoples. Many species have edible leaves and fruits and are important for a number of herbal remedies. A strong fibre from the bark is used for rope and cloth in many places, and the trees supply raw materials for hunting and fishing tools. Naturally hollow or excavated trunks often serve as water reserves or temporary shelters and have even been used as prisons, burial sites, and stables. The trees are culturally and religiously important in many areas.
The History of the Baobab Tree
On May 20, 1933, the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph published an article by author J.T. Beckett, who mentioned Michel Adanson — the same 19th-century botanist referenced in the Facebook post. Beckett wrote of the baobab tree:
When Gulliver was wandering in the region of West Australia he never saw anything more amazing than a marshmallow 95 feet round and perhaps 6,000 years old. This is what I have seen in the Kimberley region.
For the huge baobabs of that region belong to the lowly family of the Malvacaeae, which includes the simple marshmallow. The giant tree is a marshmallow multiplied to the thousandth degree.
What nature herself can do with a plant by means of time and patience (if such terms as “time” and “patience” can reasonably be connected with her works) is exemplified here in Australia in the baobab tree of Kimberley W.A. (Adansonia digitata), Monadelphia polyandria, of Linnaeus, really better known to the bushman as the “boab” than to the botanist, who appears to have been satisfied with the full and fascinating description of it by Michel Adanson (France), its discoverer, and to have left it at that.
This vegetable marvel is the oldest and largest tree in the world — none excepted — and the majority of people in Australia do not know it exists.
Beckett added, “According to the calculations of Adanson, at one year old, the diameter of such a tree is one inch, and its height 5 inches; at thirty years old it has attained a diameter of two feet, while its height is twenty-two feet, and so on, till at the age of 1,000 years the baobab is 14 feet broad and 58 feet high; and at 5,000 years the growth laterally so far outstrips its perpendicular height that the trunk will be 30 feet in diameter and only 73 feet high.”
The author of a Nov. 21, 1939, newspaper article from The Newcastle Sun reported baobab trees contained properties serving as an antidote to fevers. They also added some people used the trees as tombs.
The article continued, “A baobab may still stand after 50,000 years. Humboldt, the explorer, described it ‘the oldest organic monument of our planet.'”
For further reading, I previously published an article looking at the veracity of a claim involving U.S. politics and AI.
Editor’s Note: As the aforementioned newspaper articles dated from nearly 100 years ago, some of their information may be inaccurate.