It is the most economically important member of the genus Hevea because the milky latex extracted from the tree is the primary source of natural rubber.

These vessels spiral up the tree in a right-handed helix which forms an angle of about 30 degrees with the horizontal, and can grow as high as 15 metres (49 ft).

The tree requires a tropical or subtropical climate with a minimum of about 1,200 mm (50 in) per year of rainfall, and no frost.

The earlier practice was to burn the trees, but in recent decades, the wood has been harvested for furniture making.

The Olmec people of Mesoamerica extracted and produced similar forms of primitive rubber from analogous latex-producing trees such as Castilla elastica as early as 3,600 years ago.

A second attempt was then made, some 70,000 seeds being smuggled to Kew in 1875, by Henry Wickham, in the service of the British Empire.

[8]: 55 [9][10] About four percent of these germinated, and in 1876, about 2,000 seedlings were sent, in Wardian cases, to Ceylon (modern day Sri Lanka) and 22 were sent to the botanic gardens in Singapore.

[17] Rubber production then moved to parts of the world where it is not indigenous, and therefore not affected by local plant diseases.

[20] The majority of the rubber trees in Southeast Asia are clones of varieties highly susceptible to the South American leaf blight—Pseudocercospora ulei.

This is the case for the rubber tree, which actually suffers worse from Pseudocercospora ulei when it produces more cyanogenic glycosides.

This results in significantly divergent subpopulations with selection for or against cyanogenic glycosides, depending on local likelihoods of fungal or non-fungal pest pressure.)