Senegalese Acacia
Senegalese Acacia
Botany
Latin name
Acacia senegalCommon name
Family
FabaceaeOrigin
© Imagery Laboratory – Rocher Group
© Imagery Laboratory – Rocher Group
Botanical Engineering
Architecture
How can a tree bandage its wound when its bark is damaged? The Acacia has found the solution in its gum. This substance oozes from the tree for several weeks and hardens in contact with the air, enabling it to patch up the wound and rebuild the bark. It acts like a real plaster! The gum is produced during the dry season (December to March) and only Acacia trees over the age of six, produce it.
Origins of the plant
In Africa, the Acacia gum harvest represents an economic activity for roughly three million people. It is an interesting source of income for the producing countries. Culturally, it is mainly women, working close to villages, who harvest the Acacia gum, either naturally or from a cut made in the bark. They collect the 500g of gum that an Acacia produces between January and March, by hand. It is then dried in the sun and sold locally and internationally.
© Fotolia-Alice78
Our extract
Density and firmness. These two characteristics of the skin are maintained by fibroblasts at the heart of the dermis. The cells are responsible for producing a molecule, called collagen, which is essential to the firmness of the skin. But with age, the fibroblasts become less frequent and less active and the skin’s collagen diminishes between the age of 19 and 40. The dermis loses its capacity for maintenance, which leads to skin slackening, the appearance of wrinkles….
Intrigued by the « plaster » effect of the Acacia gum, the Botanical Beauty researchers studied the anti-aging properties of Acacia gum purified by a natural process. The in vitro tests undertaken showed that it stimulates the activity of fibroblasts and therefore the production of collagen. In vivo tests c.f. a placebo, showed that the gum reduces the depth of crow’s feet by 12% in only four hours! In Elixir 7.9 and Sérum Végétal, the Acacia gum acts directly on the dermis which gives the skin more density and firmness*.
* In vivo tests