Baobab
2 of the 7 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Baobab. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
2026 Editor's Note: This page uses language about race that was commonplace when the book was published and is offensive by today's standards. The text has been left exactly as it was printed, rather than cut or softened, so that the historical record — including how ordinary such language once was — is preserved. (Ed: ET 2026-07-22) a tree also styled the monkey-bread, African calabash, Ethiopian ian sourgourd tree. It has a or fantastic look, its stem being of little height, but of great thickness; one specimen was found 30 feet in diameter. The fruit is about 10 inches long. Externally it is downy; within this down is a hard, woody rind, containing an eatable pulp, of slightly acid taste. The juice mixed with sugar is serviceable in putrid and pestilential fevers. The and the symphonic poems, "Dante" adansonia is properly a native of Africa, (1902); "The Fire Worshippers" but it has been introduced into India. It (1892); and "Saul" (1907). is known as Adansonia digitata, being so named after Adanson French traveler, who lived from 1749 , a celebrated to 1754 in Senegal. The tree is liable to be attacked by a fungus which, vegetating in the woody part, renders it soft and pithlike. By the negroes of the W. coast these trunks are into chambers, and dead bodies are sushollowed pended in them.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
ba'o-bab, a tropical tree of western and southern Africa. A baobab tree in its glory forms a low, broad, hemispherical mass of green, perhaps sixty feet high and one hundred and fifty feet in diameter. The trunk of such a tree is thirty feet in diameter, half as thick as it is high. It has been called the largest known tree, but must yield this honor to the eucalyptus, or to giant trees of California. Large white flowers hang in drooping clusters a yard long. The fruit, called monkey's bread, supports a crowd of these animals. It is useful to travelers to quench thirst and ward off pestilential fevers. Livingstone speaks of this tree in his South African travels. 2026 Editor's Note: Baobabs are among the longest-lived trees, some over 2,000 years old, storing thousands of gallons of water in their swollen trunks — the 'upside-down tree' of African legend. Madagascar's Avenue of the Baobabs is a wonder of the world, but in a troubling sign of a changing climate, several of Africa's most ancient baobabs have suddenly died in recent years. (Ed: BR 2026-06-15)