Vegetable Tannins in East Africa

Abstract

Vegetable tannins are usually considered as minor forest products. In East Africa, however, one of these, wattle bark tannin obtained from Acacia mollissima, has ceased to be a minor forest product and has an annual export value of over £1 t million. East Africa is the second-largest producer of this product, which is to-day the world's most widely used vegetable tanning material. The coastal mangrove swamps also yield a tan bark with exports of 3,500 tons per annum. Other tannin-bearing plants grow in East Africa, and Greenway [13] made an exhaustive list of them in 1941. He did not, however, record any experimental work other than reporting on the introduction of various exotic species. The purpose of the present article is to report some analyses of bark and fruit samples which have been obtained from plantations and forests in East Africa, and to mention species which might be exploited in East Africa for which there is a potential demand, either by the local tanning industry or for export to overseas centres of leather production.