Wooden Baobab Tree – Large Hand-Painted Savanna Tree Toy

About the Baobab Tree

The African baobab is called the upside-down tree: for up to nine months a year it stands without leaves, and its short, stiff branches look like roots reaching into the sky. Many African stories say the gods planted it upside down. Its huge trunk works like a water tank – a large baobab can store more than 100,000 litres of water to survive the long dry season.

Baobabs are among the oldest trees on Earth, and radiocarbon dating has shown some to be more than 2,000 years old. Their large white flowers open only at night and are pollinated by bats, and their fruit, known as monkey bread, has about three times as much vitamin C as an orange.

• Crown (two sections)
• Trunk
• Base

Also available as a Small Baobab Tree. Build a savanna with the Large Acacia Tree and Large African Ebony Tree, and add the Realistic Safari Animals.

Assembled tree – Height × Width × Depth: 33.0 × 18.0 × 4.4 cm (13.0 × 7.1 × 1.7 in)

All pieces are shaped from solid ash wood and hand-sanded to a smooth finish with no sharp edges. The crown is hand-painted with water-based paints, the trunk and base keep the natural grain of the ash, and every piece is finished with olive oil, which protects the wood against moisture. No plastics, no solvent-based finishes, no MDF, no veneers. Made in conformity with the European toy safety standard EN 71. Small variations in colour and grain are a natural part of handmade production, not defects.

The giant of the savanna.

The baobab is a tree full of stories children love: a tree that grows upside down, stores water like a giant bottle and lives for thousands of years. As the tallest tree in our collection, it becomes the centre of any savanna scene – the meeting place where elephants, giraffes and the whole safari come together. Assembling its four pieces asks for patience and careful hands.

Inspired by Montessori and Waldorf principles, the baobab is simple in form and real in its proportions, with no batteries, sounds or buttons – the child leads the play.

Solid ash is dense and hard-wearing, and every piece is sanded and painted by hand in our workshop in Romania. Tree by tree, the savanna grows with the child and lasts long enough to be passed on.