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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.
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.
UsesLocally 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. |
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| Working with rattan canes |
Almost all the rattan that enters world trade has been collected from the wild from tropical rain forests. With forest destruction and conversion, the habitat of rattans has decreased rapidly in extent over the last few decades and there is now a very real shortage of supply. In the mid 1970s, forest departments in South-east Asia became aware of the vulnerability of rattan supply and began investigations aimed at safeguarding the long term supply of canes for the industry. Cultivation of canes presents the best possibility for the future. Early research examined pre-existing cultivation. In one small area of Indonesian Borneo rattan has been cultivated in permanent rattan gardens on land adjacent to rivers that flood severely and for prolonged periods. This land, that is more or less unsuitable for any other permanent form of agriculture because of the flooding and very acid soils, appears to be ideal for the cultivation of one rattan, Calamus trachycoleus. Here, villagers have developed a method of cultivation that has been used as a model for rattan cultivation elsewhere, whether on flooded or dry land. However, this species has a cane of small diameter (6-12 mm); large diameter canes (in excess of 18 mm) are needed to produce the framework of cane chairs, and a major focus of rattan research has been to find large diameter canes that are suitable for domestication and cultivation in a variety of habitats.
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During the late 1970s commercial estates of rattan were established in Sabah, East Malaysia. Commercial rattan planting is still a risky business as there is still so much that is unknown about the growing of rattans. However, growth rates in the new estates have been amazing - small diameter Calamus trachycoleus and the best large diameter cane Calamus manan have both been recorded as growing as fast as over 6 m a year. Several estates have already reached harvestable age and the financial returns from the estates seem promising. There are also some unexpected benefits from rattan planting. |
| Calamus ovoideus |
In order to grow properly rattan has to be planted under some sort of tree cover, such as logged-over forest, secondary forest, fruit orchards, tree plantations or, even, rubber estates. Thus rattan planting preserves tree cover, and along with tree cover, where it is semi-natural forest, wildlife is also maintained. One of the highest populations of orang-utan in Borneo is in a rattan estate and over half the wild species of rattans recorded for Sarawak have been recorded as occurring wild within the boundaries of another rattan estate.
Such commercial planting thus offers attractive prospects for wise land use in the humid tropics, allowing a crop to be grown with minimal disturbance of the vegetation. However, perhaps the most exciting potential of rattan is as a small-holder crop. Some rattans lend themselves to cultivation on a small scale under fruit trees or in rubber gardens. Such cultivation allows the smallholder to gain extra cash returns from a small area of land.
With over 600 species to choose from and a huge geographical, altitudinal and ecological range, choosing the right cane for the right habitat is clearly a complex process. What is certain is that the basic classification of rattans is of great importance to the further development of the wild resource - we must know what species we are trying to cultivate and how to distinguish it from other species of rattans at all stages of development from seed to mature plant. Kew plays a vital role in the basic research on rattans in providing the taxonomic framework for development. Kew scientists now have wide experience in rattans, their natural history, economic potential and cultivation requirements.
Current research needs for the further development of rattan that are being addressed at Kew include the search for more species suitable for plantations. At present we know enough to cultivate a mere four or five of the 600 different species of rattan, and these are all species of the ever wet lowlands of the Malay Archipelago. There is a real need to broaden this base, to look for further elite species from which selections can be made, to be used eventually in the breeding of new strains.
Dransfield, J. & Manokaran N, (eds.) 1993. Rattans. PROSEA No.6.
Pudoc, Wageningen.
Wan Razali Wan Mohd, Dransfield, J., & Manokaran, N., 1992. A guide to
the cultivation of rattan. Malaysian Forest Records No. 35. Forest Research
Institute Malaysia