Tannin is well known to be an inexpensive and ubiquitous natural biomass, which has high chelating affinity towards many metal ions. In this study, bayberry tannin (BT) was immobilized on mesoporous silica matrix to prepare a novel adsorbent, which was subsequently used for the adsorptive recovery of Au3+ from aqueous solutions. It was found that bayberry tannin-immobilized mesoporous silica (BT-SiO2) was able to effectively recover Au3+ from acidic solutions (pH 2.0). The equilibrium adsorption capacity of Au3+ on BT-SiO2 was high up to 642.0 mg/g at 323 K. Due to its mesoporous structure, BT-SiO2 exhibited an extremely fast adsorption rate to Au3+ as compared with other tannin gel adsorbent. The presence of other coexisting metal ions, such as Pb2+, Ni2+, Cu2+ and Zn2+, did not decrease the adsorption capacity of Au3+ on BT-SiO2, and BT-SiO2 had almost no adsorption capacity to these coexisting metal ions, which suggested the high adsorption selectivity of BT-SiO2 to Au3+. Additionally, about 73% of adsorbed Au3+ can be desorbed using aqua regia, and the Au3+ solution was concentrated about 18.0 times as compared with the original solution. Consequently, the outstanding characteristics of BT-SiO2 provide the possibility of effective recovery and concentration of Au3+ from diluted solutions. Crown Copyright (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.