What are rattans ?

Rattans are climbing palms that provide the raw material for the cane-furniture industry. Sometimes confused with bamboo, canes can usually be distinguished because they are solid, whereas bamboos are almost always hollow. Although there are some climbing palms in the New World, the true rattans are restricted to the Old World tropics and subtropics. They are particularly abundant in South-east Asia and the Malay Archipelago. Over 600 different species belonging to 13 genera have been recognised. Their major habitat is tropical rain forest, where in much of South-east Asia they represent the most important forest product after timber. The trade in rattans and canes is thought to be worth about £3 billion annually. The trade is labour intensive, and as it involves some of the poorest people in the community, is of great social significance.

Rattans have long and very flexible stems that need support. In favourable conditions some species will grow to very great lengths. The longest cane ever recorded was over 175 m long. Some species are single-stemmed while others are multi-stemmed, single-stemmed species providing a single harvest while the multi-stemmed species can be harvested sustainably.

Surrounding the stem are sheathing leaf bases which are nearly always fiercely spiny, the spines sometimes arranged in neat rows and interlocking to form galleries in which ants make their nests, providing extra protection to an already well protected plant. This may prevent animals from feeding on the tender growing point (or 'cabbage'), hidden within the leaf-sheaths. As well as the sheath spines, rattans usually have whips, either on the leaf sheaths or at the ends of the leaves. These whips are armed with grouped, grapnel-like spines and play a major role in supporting the rattan as it climbs into the forest canopy. It is these terrible whips and spines that make the scientific collection of rattans so unpleasant and are in part responsible for making this a poorly studied and still only partially understood group of plants.

Harvesting and processing

Rattan gatherers need to pull the canes down from the forest canopy and remove the spiny sheaths, leaves and whips. This leaves the bare cane of commerce. Rattan-harvesting is thus a rather dangerous business - dead branches can be dislodged as the rattan is pulled and ants and wasps can often be disturbed in the process. The bare canes are carried out of the forest and partially processed before being sold to middlemen; small diameter canes are dried in the sun and often smoked over burning sulphur while large canes are boiled in oil (often a mixture of diesel oil and palm oil) to remove excess moisture and natural gums, and to prevent attack by wood-boring beetles.

Uses

Locally rattans are used for a very wide range of purposes, the most important being in the manufacture of baskets and mats. Undoubtedly rattan remains the most important source of material for making baskets and mats in the South-east Asian region; however, as the wild resource becomes scarce, other materials such as split bamboo are used as substitutes. In the past much of the commercially harvested cane was exported to manufacturers in Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Europe and North America. Now some producing countries have introduced export tariffs or export bans for raw cane to encourage the manufacture of rattan furniture within the producing countries, thereby adding value to the exported product, and also helping to conserve stocks of wild rattan. However, these bans have also put extreme pressure on stocks of rattans in countries where cane export is not controlled, resulting in severe over-exploitation and even disappearance of the wild resource.

See also : Rattan cultivation · Furniture Materials