Rubber Tapping Grove

Rubber Tapping Grove is an original illustration set in Malay Peninsula. It lies in equatorial latitudes, where the climate is tropical rainforest — hot and wet all year.

Slender pale trunks stand in orderly repeated rows under a high broken canopy of broad wet leaves. On the nearest trunk a diagonal spiral has been cut into the bark, draining through a small metal spout into a black collection cup. The soil between the rows is red, and everything is still dripping.

Why is the bark cut in a descending spiral?

The spiral cut is the whole story: latex is harvested by wounding the bark in a descending spiral so the tree can be tapped for years without being killed. Rubber demands constant heat, heavy rain and no frost, which confines it to a narrow equatorial belt. Red laterite soil is what remains after long, hot, wet weathering leaches everything soluble out of it.

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