Jelutong is a large tropical forest tree from Southeast Asia, grown mainly for its timber and historically tapped for latex used in chewing gum. It is a tree-sized species rather than a typical garden or houseplant.
Family
Apocynaceae (Dogbane family)
Grows as
Tree
Temperature
Wet tropical climate; not suited to cold climates
Native range
Pen. Thailand to W. Malesia
Climate
wet tropical
About
Dyera costulata, the jelutong, is a species of tree in the family Apocynaceae. It grows to approximately 60 metres (200 ft) tall with diameters of 2 metres (5 to 6 ft), or even to 80 m (260 ft) tall with diameters to 3 m (10 ft), and boles clear and straight for 30 m (90 ft). It grows in Malaysia, Borneo, Sumatra and southern Thailand. Its natural distribution is scattered locales in low-elevation tropical evergreen forest.
In addition, jelutong can be tapped for latex and from the 1920s through the 1960s, jelutong latex was an important source of chewing gum.
Uses
Jelutong is used for its wood. Along with balsa it is technically a hardwood with many properties similar to that wood. These properties such as the low density, straight grain and fine texture mean it is easy to work with and hence popular with model makers and within the patternmaking trade. The roots are used as a cork substitute.
[Contains information from Leaf Area Index (LAI) and Heritage Trees from data.gov.sg (National Parks Board), made available under the terms of the Singapore Open Data Licence version 1.0]
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Dyera costulata by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.