Each day, The Little Prince on Asteroid B-612 gets up and tends to a few things. He rakes out his volcanoes (even the extinct one… you never know!), attends to his precious rose, and one more critical task: he pulls up the baobab trees.

“You must see to it that you pull up regularly all the baobabs, at the very first moment when they can be distinguished from the rose-bushes which they resemble so closely in their earliest youth…”

On Asteroid B-612—so small you can shift your chair a few feet and watch another sunset when you’re feeling sad—even just three of the massive-trunked, odd-looking baobab trees can take over the entire planet.

Fortunately for us here on Earth, we’ve got enough land to spare.

If you’ve not read The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and the intro to this post confused you, we suggest you pick it up just as soon as you can. And if you’d like to see more photos of these powerful trees, just click here to browse the rest of the baobab photos on 500px.