An Amazonian tree whose milky latex, tapped from cuts in the bark, became the foundation of the global natural-rubber industry.
Where it grows
The Para rubber tree is native to the Amazon basin of Brazil, Peru, Colombia, and Bolivia. Henry Wickham smuggled 70,000 seeds out of Brazil to Kew Gardens in 1876, breaking the South American monopoly. Today, more than 90 percent of natural rubber comes from plantations across Southeast Asia, especially Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam.
How to recognise it
A straight, smooth-trunked tree with palmate leaves of three leaflets and small greenish flowers. The diagnostic feature is the bark: it readily yields a thick white latex when slashed, and mature plantation trees show a characteristic diagonal tapping pattern carved into the trunk for daily collection.
Uses
Latex is coagulated with acid, rolled into sheets, and processed into natural rubber for tyres, gloves, condoms, hoses, and elastic bands. Plantation trees are felled after about 30 years of tapping, and the pale rubberwood is now a major source of mid-priced furniture and flooring.
Ecology
South American leaf blight prevents large-scale rubber plantations in the Amazon itself, the species’ native range — a reminder that the global industry was built on biogeographic luck.
Find more trees by letter
Rubber Tree starts with R and ends with E. Browse other trees along the same letter.
Trees that contain a letter from "Rubber Tree":