What Is Rubber Tree

Cultivated on plantations in the tropics and subtropics especially in southeast asia and western africa it replaced the rubber plant in the early 20th century as the chief source of natural rubber.

What is rubber tree.

Because of its elasticity resilience and toughness rubber is the basic constituent of the tires used in automotive vehicles aircraft and bicycles. As its name suggests the rubber tree hevea brasiliensis originally came from brazil from where it was introduced to such countries of the far east as malaysia indonesia burma cambodia china and vietnam. Rubber tree south american tropical tree of the spurge family euphorbiaceae. Feed your rubber tree with a general purpose fertilizer a few times a year especially.

When learning how to care for a rubber tree plant there are a few key things to remember but rubber plant care isn t as difficult as one might think. A rubber tree also referred to as rubberwood can be tapped for latex once it reaches approximately six years of age. Rubber trees are low maintenance. The latex then is refined into rubber that is ready for commercial processing.

Hevea brasiliensis the pará rubber tree sharinga tree seringueira or most commonly the rubber tree or rubber plant is a flowering plant belonging to the spurge family euphorbiaceae it is the most economically important member of the genus hevea because the milky latex extracted from the tree is the primary source of natural rubber. More than half of all rubber produced goes into automobile tires. Rubber trees formally ficus elastica can be enjoyed as either medium sized house plants or grown to become focal point beautiful indoor trees if you re patient enough to grow your own plants that start out younger when you buy them adapt better to indoor living than starting with a more mature plant. Rubber tree definition any tree that yields latex from which rubber is produced especially hevea brasiliensis of the spurge family native to south america the chief commercial source of rubber.

Its most famous feature is the milky white sap known as latex which flows freely from the tree when a sliver of bark is removed. Watering too frequently may cause leaf yellowing. In the wild the rubber tree will grow to heights of 100 to 130 feet and can live up to 100 years. Currently rubber is harvested mainly in the form of the latex from the rubber tree or others.

Rubber elastic substance obtained from the exudations of certain tropical plants natural rubber or derived from petroleum and natural gas synthetic rubber. And don t get overly zealous. The rest goes. A rubber tree plant is also known as a ficus elastica these large trees can grow up to 50 feet 15 m tall.

The latex is a sticky milky colloid drawn off by making incisions in the bark and collecting the fluid in vessels in a process called tapping.