What we certainly did not expect from our trip in Dhofar was the wide variate of trees - and special trees. It is really weird, that you can easily find yourself in a very different landscape just after 30 min drive: from beach with leaning palm trees of the Caribbean to baobab forest of Madagascar, or the rolling hills of Switzerland or the dragon blood tress of Socotra Yemen. Quite incredible actually. The tree most fascinating trees of the region are undoubtedly are the frankincense, the baobab and the dragon blood trees.
The frankincense or officially Boswellia sacra trees look knotty, like a desert bonsai. In Wadi Dawkah the oldest trees are fenced off to protect them. There is a very interesting NatGeo article about why and how these trees are in danger: frankincense oil is high coveted and trees are overharvested. The trunk of the tree is cut and in response sap oozes out to protect the wound which than hardens to resin and this resin is collected, sorted and sold as frankincense. Overharvest means trees are cut too many times - and they eventually die. In Oman many of the trees are in Wadi Dawkah which is a UNESCO World Heritage site and therefore they are protected by law.
Socotra in Yemen is famous of
Dragon Blood trees (you can read more about in this
NatGeo article) - to visit the island is one of our bucket list items. We were to go last Ocotber, but of course COVID happened... Maybe this year we can see the magical trees we thought - and out of the blue we saw them in Dhofar. Truth to be told the Dhofar version is slightly different from the Socotra ones: one trees in Dhofar are Dracaena serrulata and the ones in Socotra are Dracaena cinnabari. The size is one obvious difference - the Dhofar ones are much smaller. Never the less they look amazing! But as so many other things - they are not doing good and they are actually endangered. The first off-road book ever published 20 years ago talks about a small forest of these trees behind the
Jabal Samhan view point - and we could not find anything. The trees are scattered, few here and there. We saw only large amount of trees in smaller areas on steap hills sides, areas not really accessible - camels like them farmers use them so easy access trees are either gone or damaged.
And last but certainly not least - the
baobab trees. I first heard of baobab in the Little Prince and since in Hungarian it is called "monkeys' bread" I thought it was hilarious. And of the course the drawing just made it even more mysterious - either way the story got stuck with me and always wanted to see this tree in real life. Certainly did not expect that to happen in Dhofar - and as it turned out there is a whole forest of baobab trees! They are special and giant - not as big as their big brothers from
Madagascar , but they are big!!
This mega tree is in Dhalkut, next to the Yemeni boarder:
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