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Ficus elastica
Also called Rubber Bush, India Rubber Fig, India Rubber Tree, Indian Rubber Tree, Rubber Fig, Rubber Plant, Karet Tree
In Singapore: Indian Rubber Tree, Rubber Fig, Rubber Plant, 印度榕, Pokok Getah Rambong, Rambong, Indian Rubber, Indian Rubber Fig, Snake Tree, Assam Rubber, Bunoh Seteroh, Nyatus, Ara Rambong (Grown in Singapore)
3 NParks heritage trees in Singapore: Found in; Found in Duxton Plain Park, near Pinnacle block 1D; Found in
A large evergreen tree in the fig family, grown indoors as a houseplant for its glossy leaves. Give it bright indirect light and let the top of the soil dry out between waterings.
Ficus elastica, the rubber fig, rubber bush, rubber tree, rubber plant, or Indian rubber bush, Indian rubber tree, or rambung is a species of flowering plant in the family Moraceae, native to eastern parts of South and Southeast Asia. Its common names reflect its historical use as a source of rubber within its native range, but it is not used in the modern commercial-scale production of natural rubber.
In parts of India, people guide the roots of the tree over chasms to eventually form living bridges. To this day there are large bridges woven from aerial roots in Meghalaya, India. Although the trees used for these bridges are very large, aerial roots can be found on F. elastica as small as 1 feet tall.
The natural range of F. elastica extends from Nepal in the north to Indonesia, Bhutan, Northeastern India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Yunnan in China, and Malaysia. It has been widely introduced in most tropical regions of the world, including in the Americas. In Europe it can be found in mild locations throughout the Mediterranean Basin. In the Near East, it is a common landscaping element on the streets of Tel Aviv, Israel.
Medicinal and nutritional usage of F. elastica: a distillation of the plant's aerial rootlets can be used to make a poultice for healing wounds, while the tips of the leaves, when young, can be used as salad greens. Small versions of the trees can be grown as houseplants. F. elastica was once thought to improve indoor air quality when placed in the home; however, though F. elastica does remove 1 microgram per hour of formaldehyde from the air, these results are not applicable to typical buildings, where outdoor-to-indoor air exchange already removes volatile organic compounds (VOCs) at a rate that could only be matched by the placement of 10–1000 plants/m2 of a building's floor space.
Ficus annulata · Mosaic Fig · Ficus atricha · Florida strangler fig · Roxburgh fig · Indian banyan · Weeping fig · Longleaf Fig · Ficus brachypoda · Fig · Ficus caulocarpa · Ficus celebensis
[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 Ficus elastica 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.
Pet safety from the ASPCA toxic and non-toxic plant lists.
