Plant Wiki

The open plant encyclopedia

Know any plant.
Grow it well.

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.

  • 13,000+plants with full pages
  • 365,000+plant species worldwide
  • 220+countries covered

Common in

See all

The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.

What do you want to do?

Popular plants

Browse all plants

See them in 3D

All plants in 3D

Browse plants

Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.

Plant Wiki › Browse plants

Silkrubber

Funtumia elastica

Also called Ive Rubber, Lagos Silk Rubbertree, Lagos Rubber, West African Rubbertree, Bush Rubber, Lagos Caoutchouc

Silkrubber
Photo: Matilda Smith (died 1926), Public domain

Silkrubber is a medium-sized rubber tree from West and Central tropical Africa, grown mainly for latex and timber rather than as an ornamental. It needs warm, seasonally dry tropical conditions and a sunny spot.

Family
Apocynaceae (Dogbane family)
Grows as
Tree, Shrub
Light
Full sun
Water
Water deeply during dry spells and let the top of the soil dry out between waterings.
Soil
Well-drained loamy soil.
Temperature
20–35 °C; protect below 10 °C
How easy
Moderate
Native range
W. Trop. Africa to South Sudan and NE. Tanzania
Climate
seasonally dry tropical

About

Funtumia elastica (also known as the bush rubber tree or silkrubber) is a medium-sized African rubber tree with glossy leaves, milky sap, and long woody seedpods. The bark is used in the traditional medicine of tropical Africa. It is economically important in West African countries such as Ghana, where it is commonly known as the ofruntum.

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Funtumia 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.

Credits & terms

Identify a plant

Point at a leaf or flower and snap. One plant in frame works best.

Your photo
Starting camera…