Africa's ancient baobab, with its distinctive swollen trunk and known as the "tree of life", is under a new and mysterious threat, with some of the largest and oldest dying abruptly in recent years.
Nine of the 13 oldest baobabs, aged between 1,000 and 2,500 years, have died over the past dozen years, according to a study published in the scientific journal Nature Plants.
The sudden collapse is "an event of unprecedented magnitude", the study says.
Climate change, with its rising temperatures and increasing drought conditions, is a suspected factor but no definite cause is known. The deaths occurred in the southern African countries of Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
"The trees that are falling over are at the southern range of the distribution of baobabs," said Stephan Woodborne with South Africa's National Research Foundation, an author of the study. "What we believe is happening is that the climate envelope in which they exist is shifting, and so we are not talking about the wholesale extinction of baobabs."
"Baobab trees are obviously iconic because of their size and their shape and they are very distinctive on the African landscape, and communities have been using them for various reasons through time," Woodborne said. "We find many archaeological sites underneath these trees, and when we have trees that are more than 1,000 years old we are talking about occupations that took place many hundreds of years ago."
Disclaimer: No Business Standard Journalist was involved in creation of this content