The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Eucommia ulmoides
Also called Gutta Percha Tree, Gutta Percha, Eucommia, Woody Plant, Hardy Rubber Tree
Du Zhong (Eucommia ulmoides) is a deciduous tree from China, the only species in its family, grown mainly for its bark in traditional Chinese medicine and for its latex-based rubber. It is grown in gardens as a hardy, cold-tolerant specimen tree rather than a houseplant.
Eucommia ulmoides is a species of small tree native to China. It belongs to the monotypic family Eucommiaceae. It is considered vulnerable in the wild, but is widely cultivated in China for its bark and is highly valued in herbology such as traditional Chinese medicine.
The iridoid glucoside geniposidic acid can be found in E. ulmoides.
This tree is also occasionally planted in botanical gardens and other gardens in Europe, North America and elsewhere, being of interest as the only cold-tolerant (to at least -30 °C) rubber-producing tree.
It is one of the 50 fundamental herbs used in Chinese herbology, where it is called dùzhòng (Chinese: 杜仲).
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Eucommia ulmoides 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.
