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Oct. 19, 2006 Trees of two very different kinds go by the name of “rubber trees”. The more economically important tree is the Pará rubber tree. The word “Pará” is the name of a state in Brazil with its capital at Belém, where I spent 5 months last year. Belém is at the mouth of the Amazon River, and the Amazon basin is the homeland of this kind of rubber tree. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Brazil was the world’s leading producer of rubber, but with the rise of synthetic rubber and the development, from Brazilian seeds, of more successful natural rubber plantations in Asia, the South American business began to decline. Today Brazil’s natural rubber market share is very small compared with that of Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and India. The scientific name of the Pará rubber tree is Hevea brasiliensis, in the family Euphorbiaceae, which also includes cassava, castor beans, poinsettia, spurge and other plants. This was once considered one of four families in the order Euphorbiales, but later thinking has put it in a new order, called Malpighiales. Though I have seen scattered plantations in Brazil, apparently rubber does not lend itself to this method and must be collected from wild trees there. However, plantations do well in Southeast Asia. I visited a rubber plantation in Malaysia in 1989, and the tree being cultivated was indeed Hevea brasiliensis. The method of extraction is familiar. The bark is incised diagonally and the latex drips slowly out into a pot or a jug. Here is a picture of a stand of Hevea brasiliensis: http://www.futura-sciences.com/img/hevea_champs.jpg Another tree commonly called a rubber tree, or Indian rubber tree, bears the scientific name of Ficus elastica. “Ficus” is merely the Latin name for “fig tree”. The genus Ficus consists of about 800 species of fig tree, including, in addition, to Indian rubber trees, such examples as banyan trees, kadota fig trees, weeping figs, strangler figs and bo trees. Ficus trees belong to the family Moraceae, including figs and mulberries. This is a family in the order Urticales. It was under a bo tree, which is also called a peepul or pipal tree, that the legendary Indian religious figure, Buddha, received his enlightment. Indian rubber trees have aerial roots. Tendrils grow down from the branches and become auxiliary trunks. The trunks are buttressed, as if some of the incipient auxiliary trunks did not effect separation from the main trunk. Ficus elastica is epiphytic and wasp-pollinated. I don’t know whether and how extensively Ficus elastica is cultivated for rubber. It is widely planted as an ornamental tree in Hawaii, which is where I first became aware of its existence, when I lived in Honolulu, in the mid-1980’s. Here is a typical picture: http://www.hear.org/starr/hiplants/images/hires/starr_031108_3165_ficus_elastica.jpg In year 2005, Asia produced about 94% of the world’s 8,821,000 tons of natural rubber, as well as 41% of the world’s 9,000,000 tons of synthetic rubber, according to International Rubber Study Group’s statistics, which can be seen here: http://www.rubberstudy.com/statistics-quarstat.aspx ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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