What Is A 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 a rubber tree. A rubber tree plant is also known as a ficus elastica these large trees can grow up to 50 feet 15 m tall. Depending on the use following the tapping stage the latex milk is processed in different ways. Rubber tree south american tropical tree of the spurge family euphorbiaceae. 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.

Cooked with sulfur and often other. The rest goes. The latex then is refined into rubber that is ready for commercial processing. More than half of all rubber produced goes into automobile tires.

Natural rubber is produced by the rubber tree hevea brasiliensis. About 70 per cent of natural latex is used for tires. In the wild the rubber tree will grow to heights of 100 to 130 feet and can live up to 100 years. Even when it s set into a product this latex based natural rubber is very squashy pretty smelly and not very useful.

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. Because of its elasticity resilience and toughness rubber is the basic constituent of the tires used in automotive vehicles aircraft and bicycles. 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. The kind of rubber you see in the world around you in things like car and bicycle tires is vulcanized.

Rubber elastic substance obtained from the exudations of certain tropical plants natural rubber or derived from petroleum and natural gas synthetic rubber. Rubber the kind you get from a tree starts off as white and runny latex. In order to collect the latex milk from tree an incision is made in the bark of the rubber tree which is called tapping. A rubber tree also referred to as rubberwood can be tapped for latex once it reaches approximately six years of age.

Currently rubber is harvested mainly in the form of the latex from the rubber tree or others.