Hevea brasiliensis
species of plant

Hevea brasiliensis, the Pará rubber tree, sharinga tree, seringueira, or, most commonly, rubber tree or rubber plant, is a flowering plant belonging to the spurge family, Euphorbiaceae. It is originally native to the Amazon basin, but is now pantropical in distribution due to introductions. 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.
Description
Hevea brasiliensis is a tall deciduous tree growing to a height of up to 43 m (141 ft) in the wild. Cultivated trees are usually much smaller because drawing off the latex restricts their growth. The trunk is cylindrical and may have a swollen, bottle-shaped base. The bark is some shade of brown, and the inner bark oozes latex when damaged. The leaves have three leaflets and are spirally arranged. The inflorescences include separate male and female flowers. The flowers are pungent, creamy-yellow and have no petals.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Hevea brasiliensis” is species of plant. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Hevea, brasiliensis and species, not as a finished interpretation.
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Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q156538. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hevea brasiliensis” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.