| 释义 |
baobab|ˈbɑːəʊbæb|
Also 7 bahobab, boabab.
[First mentioned by Prosper Alpinus Hist. Nat. ægypti (Venice 1592), ch. xvii, De Bahobab, who speaks of the use of its fruit ‘in æthiopia’: apparently, therefore, the name belongs to some central African lang.]
A tree (Adansonia digitata), also called ‘Monkey-bread,’ and Ethiopian Sour Gourd, with a stem of enormous thickness, found from Senegambia and Abyssinia to Lake Ngami, and long naturalized in Sri Lanka and some parts of India; considered by Humboldt to be ‘the oldest organic monument of our planet.’ The fibres of the bark are used for ropes and cloth.
1640Parkinson Theat. Bot. 1632 This [Ethiopian Sowre Gourd] is very like to be..the Bahobab of Alpinus. 1681R. Knox Ceylon in Arber Eng. Garner I. 441 There was also a baobab tree growing just by the fort. 1797Holcroft Stolberg's Trav. IV. xciv. 310 The African tree called Barbab [sic], described..by Adanson. 1857Livingstone Trav. xxviii. 573 We spent a night at a baobab, which was hollow and would hold twenty men inside. 1866A. Brown in Treas. Bot. 18 The fibre [of the bark] is so strong as to give rise to a common saying in Bengal: ‘As secure as an elephant bound with a baobab rope.’ |