Nísia Floresta will tell you that Antoine de Saint-Exupéry saw this baobab from the air on one of his flights across the Atlantic, and that it ended up in The Little Prince, the book whose tiny planet is overrun by baobabs. The plaque standing beside the tree tells a plainer story: it was planted in 1877 by a local man named Manoel Júnior. Those two accounts do not sit easily together, and there is a third. A widely repeated tradition holds that the tree grew from seeds an enslaved African carried from home. The plaque, quoted on the municipality's own page, is the only one of the three with a name and a year attached, which makes the tree about 150 years old: young, for a species that can live for well over a thousand. The other stories cannot be proven, and nobody has ruled them out either. What is not in doubt is how seriously the town takes it. The baobab has been protected under Brazil's 1965 forest code and a municipal law of 1970, and in 2007 the council went further twice over: one law declared the ground around it of scenic interest, a second named the tree itself Environmental Heritage of the Municipality. It stands in the central plaza in front of the church, a short walk from the bus terminal and the old railway station, on open public ground. Nobody has published its girth. If you visit with a tape measure, we would like to know.
Central plaza in front of the church, Centro, Nísia Floresta You can recognise it as the baobab in the central plaza, with a plaque beside it recording its 1877 planting. It stands in front of the church, near the bus terminal and the old railway station.
Free. Stands in the town's central plaza, in front of the church, near the bus terminal and old railway station; open public ground.
Central Nísia Floresta, walking distance of the town centre; the town itself sits roughly 45 minutes by road from Natal (day-trip range, but by car/bus rather than a city walk)