Natural Ways to Live Healthy and Happy

 
Acacia
acacia senegal

AKA
Cape Gum
Egyptian Thorn
Gum Arabic Tree

DESCRIPTION
Small, spiney, leguminous tree or shrub
grows in sandy soil mostly in Tropical Africa.

After rainy season ends, stems begin to extude gum,
collected from Dec to June for marketing as gum arabic.

Alternate to bipinnate leaves axillary racemes
of yellow flowers arranged n globose heads,
fruit is oblong pod.

Of two varieties, produced by two different trees,
one yielding a white, the other a red gum,
is usually in roundish or oval unbroken pieces
of various sizes, larger than those of Turkey Gum,
less brittle and pulverizable, less fissured and often occurs
in long, cylindrical or curved pieces.

The term 'Gum Senegal' is not, strictly speaking,
synonymous with Gum Acacia, though it is commonly so used.
Gum Acacia is the name originally pertaining
to Sudan, Kordofan or Egyptian (hashabi) Gum,
which possesses properties rendering it superior and always
preferred to any other known to commerce.

During the political and military disturbances in Egypt
between 1880 and 1890, this gum became so nearly
unobtainable that occasional packages only
were seen in the market.
Among the many substitutes then offered,
the best was Gum Senegal,
which was adopted as the official equivalent of Gum Acacia.
In this way, it came about that
he names were regarded as synonymous.

In 1890, the original Acacia again came
into the market and eventually became as abundant as ever,
but it is no longer possible to entirely
separate the two names.
Most of the characteristically distinct grades of Acacia Gum
are now referred to particular species of the genus Acacia.
Most works state that both the Kordofan and Senegal Gums
are products of acacia senegal (Wild.), the range
of which is thus given as Senegambia in West Africa,
the Upper Nile region in Eastern Africa,
with more or less of the intervening central region.


ACTIONS
CONDITION
USE


 

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