Here are some of the trees that are planted, and their amazing properties:
Acacia Mangium
Trade name “Brown Sal Wood”, grows 25-35m in height.
The wood is used for construction, boat building, attractive furniture and cabinet making, veneer, mouldings, and door and windows components. Pulp excellent for papermaking and has high tannin content, justifying commercial exploitation. Seeds can be cooked and eaten as a vegetable. Good for soil conservation, shade and is planted as a wind or firebreak. Young shoots and leaves browsed by cattle. Provides good quality charcoal and artificial carbon. Forms a symbiosis with soil bacteria, and transforms free nitrogen into nitrogen-rich organic and non-organic compounds.
Mango
It is ultimately a large tree, growing up to 65 ft.
Cultivated in many tropical regions and distributed widely in the world, Mango is one of the most extensively exploited fruits for food, juice, flavor, fragrance and colour.
Mango trees make handsome landscape specimens and shade trees. They are erect and fast growing (with sufficient heat) and the canopy can be broad and rounded.
The tree is long-lived with some specimens known to be over 300 years old and still fruiting
Mango wood is also used to make rafters, window frames, agricultural implements, boxes, plywood and charcoal.
Mango wood is also used to make boats and dugout canoes, elegant furniture, carved and turned bowls, vases, jewellery, drums, ukuleles, and toys.
Mango leaves are used for mulch, and as cattle fodder. The kernel from the Mango seed is eaten as famine food, when people are short on food. Oil can be pressed from the kernel and used to make soap.
The flowers, bark, gum, kernel oil and leaves are used to make medicines to treat many human maladies.
Because of all these useful characteristics the mango tree is classified as one of the world's outstanding multipurpose trees.
Acacia Senegal
Grows to 15m tall.
Seeds are dried as a vegetable also containing fruits.
Leaves and pods are browsed by sheep, goats and camels. Bees seek the nectar from the flowers. Excellent fuel wood yields charcoal and can be the only wood species to survive in dry areas. The roots yield a strong fibre used for cordage, ropes and fishing nets. The heartwood is used for making carts and Persian wheels, sugar can crushers, agricultural implements, horse girths and tool handles. Gum production is excellent on poor soils and higher in stressed trees.
Seeds contain fat which is used for medicine and soap making. Roots are used to treat dysentery, gonorrhoea and nodular leprosy.
Acacia Amarilla
Generally 15-20m tall but can grow to 30m and is grown in some areas primarily as fodder for camels, water buffalo and cattle.
100 kg of leaves yield 11-12 kg of digestible protein and 37 kg of digestible carbohydrates. Whitish fragment flowers attract bees and the nectar produces light-coloured honey. Excellent fuel wood species. Fruits can yield 10 barrels of ethanol per hectare.
Decorative Heartwood is dark brown with black streaks, heavy and hard, strong and fairly durable, used for interior moulding, parquet, furniture, panelling, turnery, general construction, agricultural implements and mine props. Reddish gum is used as an adulterant gum. Bark is used for tanning fishing nets, leaves and seeds are used for eye problems, and the bark to treat boils. Saponin has spermicidal activity. The bark can be used for soap.
Silk Tree
6-9m tall. Leaves fold up at night.
Has showy, fragrant pink flowers which provides nectar and pollen for bees. Large leaves up to 50cm used as fodder. Wood is used in furniture making. Toxic amino acids in seeds repel or kills pests. Dried stem bark used medicinally in China preparing tonics and sedatives. Hosts the Iac insect which is used in manufacture of lacquer. Good for soil erosion, shelter in gardens, withstands drought and can adapt well in arid conditions. Enhances soil fertility by nitrogen fixation.
Desert Date
Desert Date grows up to 10m high.
Ripe and unripe fruit is eaten dried, fresh or chewed as gum. The fruit is made into drinks, alcoholic liquor, and soap. Young leaves are used as a vegetable. Flowers are supplementary food and flavouring ingredient. Leaves, fruit and sprouts are all eaten by livestock. The kernels produce edible oil used for cooking. Root is used to treat malaria and used against stomach pains when boiled in soup. Bark is used to treat heartburn and de-worm cattle. Gum is used to treat chest pains. Produces high quality charcoal. The wood makes good firewood through considerable heat with little smoke – making it particularly suitable for indoor use. Strong fibre is obtained from the bark. Can be used as glue. The seeds are used for rosary beads and necklaces.
Is useful for making livestock enclosures and fencing.
Calliandra Calothyrsus
Average height is 5-6m but can be up to 12m.
Demanded for production of sheet rubber. Easily bleached and suitable for pulp or papermaking. Good firewood and charcoal production species. Annual coppice harvests 10-20 years and cut at 50cm from ground, 3m high coppices are formed in only 6 month rotations.
Rich in protein leaves provide fodder for livestock and fish with no toxic substances. Suitable as green manure due to high leaf biomass and high protein yield. Year round beauty red flowers contain nectar, making bee keeping profitable producing pleasant bitter sweet honey. Roots are able to fix atmospheric nitrogen. Used to rehabilitate erosion-prone areas. Suitable for hedgerow boundaries and protection against sun and rain around houses.
Indian Laburnum
Indian Laburnum grows 10m tall.
Coppices vigorously. Produces yellow flowers and yields pollen for bees. Reddish wood, hard and heavy is strong and durable and suited for cabinetwork, farm implements, inlay work, posts, wheels and mortars.
Is a folk remedy for burns, cancer, constipation, convulsions, delirium, diarrhoea, epilepsy, gravel, pimples, and glandular tumours. The seed is recognised as ant bilious,, aperitif, carminative, and laxative, the root is used for burning sensations, leprosy, skin disease, syphilis, and tubercular glands. The leaves for erysipelas, malaria, rheumatism, and ulcers, the buds for biliousness, constipation, fever, leprosy, and skin disease, inflammation.
The fruit for abdominal pain, constipation, fever, heart disease, and leprosy, antipyretic, demulcent, purgative, refrigerant, good for chest complaints, eye ailments, flu heart and liver ailments, and rheumatism, though suspected of inducing asthma. The juice is used to alleviate ringworm and blisters. Leaf poultices are applied to the chilblains, also used in facial massage for brain afflictions, and applied externally for paralysis. Pulp for anthrax, blood poisoning, backwater fever, dysentery, and malaria.
Delonix Regia
10-15m (max. 18m) high
Flowers are reputed to produce bee forage. The pods and wood are used for fuel. Seeds contain gum that find use in textiles and food industries. Bark has medicinal properties. Seeds are occasionally used as beads. Planted as a shade tree in dairy farms, tea plantations and compounds.
Mainly valued as a decorative tree. Planted as live fence posts.
Honey Locust
Hardy and drought tolerant growing 15-25m tall.
Seeds can be roasted and used as coffee substitute. Leaves are excellent source of fodder. Coppice re-growth retains high protein. Attractive to honey making bees. Excellent source of fuel - wood. Energy Alcohol can be made by fermenting the pulp.
Fruit pulp is used for lung diseases. Powdered seed is used for head colds. Pods are folk remedy for dyspepsia, measles, colds and fevers. Bark has been used for blood disorders and coughs. The bark tea treats whooping cough.
The wood is strong, hard and durable, resistant to shock, and reddish-brown with attractive figuring; used locally for fence posts, pallets, crating, general construction, railroad ties and for making guitars.
Apple
Apple trees can provide important nutrients and vitamins to diets that are dominated by cereals, because many of them produce fruits during the late dry season and early wet season when stocks of cereal crops usually are low, and because they provide a source of income.
The fruit trees help to tackle the issue of deforestation in Africa, and the resulting impact on global warming. They also help local communities by providing a sustainable source of income. As well as education for future generations on care and biodiversity.
Leucaena Leucoephala
Efficient in Nitrogen fixation and Biomass production. Fast growing under flexible conditions. Sometimes referred to as the miracle tree for its multiple uses.
Very strong production of livestock fodder, green manure, small wood products and for soil conversion. Seeds can be used as beads. Can be used as a charcoal source and responds well to coppicing
Avocado Tree
Can be grown only in subtropical and tropical climates. A full-grown avocado tree may bear a million flowers in a season, the flowers occurring in panicles of several dozen to several hundred on the ends of the numerous branches.
Guava Tree
In warmer tropical regions guavas will ripen all year. They are not suited well to too humid climates. Tropical guavas are one of the easiest to grow of all the tropical fruits and become productive at just a year old.
