If the coconut tree can be described as arrogant and strong, the rubber tree to ordinary eye in appearance is plain, useless and ugly, but look closely, then you will see it is perpetually crying, always wet and seeps slowly, all over, all day long.
Never free flowing, until you cut it open. Even then you do not see anything close to speed, it is always slow, you might say it is dying or bleeding to give you it’s all-powerful juice, a product that every one have learnt to rely on.
You can’t enter a house, a car, a library or office, boat, or a aircraft, without the use of or dependence on the by-product of that sticky juice called rubber. Simply rip it open and an untold harvest comes cascading. Proudly the rubber tree stands in the middle of the forest. “I may be slender with watery sticky skin, but you have not yet learn’t to do without me’, ‘Try do without me if you can’, it’s arrogant boast reverberates through the forest, amidst every fruit and sinewy tree.
The rubber tree is slow, very very slow; taking at least six years to mature enough to allow for harvesting and up to 13 years for full maturity.
But what it lacks in speed it gives in finished products that are without parallel in speed and resilience. The Rubber tree is ambitious, bossy, greedy, rude and arrogant. It has reason to be arrogant, when it is ready to reproduce it behaves like a warrior in full steam, it scatters it’s seeds like a flying spear to almost 100 yards from its solitary location. It has grounds for majestic arrogance, it stands almost 100 meters tall and does not share space above or on the ground.
It greedily hugs the ground rudely pushes everyone aside until its roots have sunk directly underground and all around. You only need to look at the rubber tree and the almost endless list of direct products and you’ll agree that the rubber tree is ambitious. From the rubber tree comes ‘tyre’ for all ‘mobile and immobile vessels, latex products, sealants, toys, paints, electrical wires, shoes’, the list is endless.
And don’t expect it’s retirement any time soon, since it can last up to 100 years and the wood from the rubber tree can be used in construction and furniture and is as resilient and sturdy as its many other direct and indirect products. And did you know that paper products come from trees including rubber trees?
