2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
Soft and durable car tires rustle on the asphalt. This is not the sound of wooden wheels on the cobblestone pavement. And a person owes such comfort for his ear to plants, along the stems and trunks of which an amazing milky juice runs
Brazilian Hevea
Brazilian Hevea was born in the humid tropics of South America. The evergreen tree grew quietly in a fertile climate when the Spanish and Portuguese conquerors, thirsty for wealth and glory, reached the shores of the continent.
Among the many miracles that met the intruders was a soft black ball that the local kids kicked with their bare feet. It turned out that the ball was rolled from "tree tears", which in the language of the aborigines sounded like "kao-chu". It is not for nothing that the best footballers are born in South America. Apparently, they already have in their genes a love of ball games and an age-old skill.
And the tree cried like milky juice flowing from wounds and cuts. Tears weren't just for games. Of these, the Indians made waterproof shoes, which protected the feet from moisture during the rainy season, and became sticky and viscous in the heat, losing their shape and size.
Only in the 19th century did "rubber" take its rightful place among the overseas wonders. First, an eraser was made from it, with which it was possible to remove the graphite trace of a pencil from a sheet, then waterproof raincoats … and with the development of automobile production, it became indispensable.
Although today scientists have invented artificial rubber, Brazilian Hevea continues to work for the benefit of humanity. Where business begins, honor ends there, and now the seeds of the tree, already banned from export from Brazil, are sprouting in Indonesia and Ceylon, where a third of the world's rubber is collected.
Homegrown dandelion
Rubber can be obtained not only from the 30-meter evergreen trees of Hevea, the trunks of which grow up to half a meter in diameter, but also from our ineradicable dandelions, which cover the roadsides, city lawns and intrusively make their way to vegetable beds with a continuous carpet.
Milky sap lazily spreads over all parts of the plant, which is not inferior in quality to the milky juice of Hevea Brazilian. That's just with growth
Dandelion pumped up, and therefore even continuous thickets are negligible for mass production of rubber.
But it is very possible to try to make a soccer ball with your own hands, and at the same time to clear the garden of weeds. In extreme cases, grab the nearest meadows, yellowing from the flowers of the plant. If there is no milky juice on the ball, you can make an eraser for school drawing or geometry lessons.
Kok-sagyz
Dandelion's relative growing in Central Asia is also a herbaceous perennial. However, people cultivated plantations of plants and used the milky juice to make rubber, until scientists invented artificial rubber, which turned out to be much cheaper.
Who knows, perhaps a person will still return to the help of a herbaceous plant. At least some American car monsters do not exclude this option, calling for some reason
Kok-sagyz «
Russian dandelion ».
Ficus rubber
Ficus rubber - another representative of the tropics, through whose veins rubber runs. With us, Ficuses prefer to live in room conditions, therefore, they are only suitable for a person to spend time wiping dust from hard large leaves in order to put the nervous system in order after a hectic day at work.
Since Ficus is not a herb like Dandelion or Kok-sagyz, but an evergreen tree that naturally rises to the heavens up to 40 meters, you have to stop its zeal in indoor conditions, when the ceiling hangs gloomily over the top.
But I met such a handsome man the other day among the greenery of the "Sinbad" hotel, which is located on the sands of the city of Hurghada in Egypt:
A dozen of these trees would make a ball, I think. But here they are not engaged in the production of balls, but they heal the bodies and souls of Europeans, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Kazakhs and even Chinese.
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