One of the wonderful plants that mother nature has filled our earth with is the hevea tree. Why is it special, what use did a person come up with for it, and what does it look like? Let's find out.
Appearance and features of the plant
Hevea (rubber tree) is a tropical plant found in Indonesia, Malaysia and South America. It is special in that when the bark is cut, milky-white juice comes out, which resembles the juice of the familiar milkweed or dandelion. The frozen mass was used by the Indians to make various household items, including balls for ritual games.
The hevea tree itself belongs to the genus of red trees, therefore it is characterized by extraordinary strength and hardness of wood, which is also easy to process. Products made from it are resistant to decay, therefore they are very durable and beautiful. But the main value of this evergreen plant up to fifty meters high is its juice.
Rubber milk
That's what the inhabitants of the tropics call the juice that the Hevea plant gives. Latex (scientifically the same juice) is minedfar from every tree. First of all, it must reach the age of ten or twelve years. And only its height and trunk diameter help to determine the age of a hevea, since it does not have rings on the cut and texture. "Adult" can be considered a plant with a height of 24 meters and a diameter of 75 centimeters. It is possible to extract rubber from one tree for up to thirty years, after which it is cut down and replaced with a young plant. But hevea is not specially planted: in a humid and warm environment, its large seeds, resembling chestnuts, germinate themselves. Therefore, workers are even forced to thin out thickets of young plants so that they do not turn into an impenetrable jungle.
It is worth noting that latex is extracted not only from hevea. The thick juice of some varieties of ficuses has similar properties, but still the Brazilian plant is the most productive, and the rubber from it is of higher quality. That is why the hevea tree has flooded all the world's plantations.
How is rubber harvested?
The juice, which is extracted from hevea, contains, in addition to rubber, water, proteins, resins, ash and sugar. Therefore, after collection, the liquid is cleaned and “squeezed out” of water. This is the so-called raw rubber, which is later turned into a material for various rubber products.
Every morning a hevea tree is subjected to such an operation: an incision is made on the trunk with a special knife, deep and sloping. Containers for collecting milk juice are attached under it - clay or porcelain cups of small size. For a day from one plant you can collect about two hundredgrams of juice. After lunch, a worker walks around the rubber plantation and pours all the contents into a can. And then the "harvest" is sent to the plant for further processing.
Hevea juice at the factory
What is next done with the juice collected from an unusual tree? It is filtered, acetic acid is added and poured into large baking sheets. There, the mass thickens and freezes. Then these white panels are rolled through patterned iron rolls and dried. The final stage is smoking, thanks to which the rubber acquires a waxy color and protection from voracious ants.
The life of one tree
It is worth noting that the old rubber tree looks very bad. After all, every day for fifteen or twenty years, they mutilate it with incisions. This crust covers the entire trunk from the base to human height (it is inconvenient to collect juice above). Each new groove is made lower than the previous one on the whole section of the bark, and when one side of the tree is covered with notches, they move to the other. When not a single untouched place remains there, the worker returns to the front of the trunk again and cuts the “wounds” covered with a scar. In total, during the life of one hevea, about ten thousand cuts are applied to its body, from which up to two tons of rubber are collected.
It is worth noting that the maintenance of rubber plantations is a very profitable business. On the world market, a ton of raw material costs about six hundred dollars, and one tree can produce juice for 40-50 dollars a year without requiring special expenses. That is why in the Malay Archipelago on everyHevea grows on a free piece of land. The tree, the photo of which is presented in this article, is considered here the gift of the gods, and it forms an important part of the economy of countries.
Afterword
It is worth noting that rubber tree wood is often used today for the production of furniture, frames, kitchen accessories, floors. Cutting boards made from it are especially good because they do not absorb moisture. And the special coloring of hevea allows you to make exclusive things and bring to life the most bizarre fantasies of designers. Here it is, a unique tree from the New World, which has made human life more comfortable. And now the main task of Homo sapiens is to save this plant, because it may disappear from the face of the earth due to its intensive use.
