Mesoporous alumina was synthesized using bayberry tannin (BT) as template. This novel synthesis strategy was based on a precipitation method associated with aluminum nitrate as the source of aluminum in an aqueous system. $N_2$ adsorption/desorption, XRD, SEM and TEM were used to characterize the as-prepared mesoporous alumina. The results showed that the mesoporous alumina possessed crystalline pore wall, high specific surface area, narrow pore distribution and excellent thermal stability. Moreover, the surface area and pore size of the mesoporous alumina can be tuned by changing the experimental parameters. Further, the mesoporous alumina was investigated as the support of palladium catalyst ($Pd-Al_2O_3{^*}$) for the hydrogenation of propenyl, styrene and linoleic acid. For comparison, the reference catalyst ($Pd-Al_2O_3$) prepared without barberry tannin was also employed for the catalytic hydrogenation. The experimental results showed that $Pd-Al_2O_3{^*}$ exhibited the superior catalytic performance than $Pd-Al_2O_3$ for all the investigated substrates, especially for the hydrogenation of linoleic acid with larger molecular.