Henry Wickham

The Amazon rubber industry collapsed almost overnight. In 1876 the English botanist Henry Wickham shipped 70,000 Hevea seeds to the Royal Botanic Gardens in London. New strains of Hevea were developed that produced three to four times as much mbber and were more disease-resistant than their wild Amazonian cousins. Soon, seedlings were sent to Malaya, Java, and other islands of the East Indies. Thirty-five years later, rubber plantations on these islands took control of the industry. 

Natural rubber is obtained from the latex of the Hevea brasiliensis (rubber tree), which is indigenous to the Amazon basin of Brazil. In 1876, Sir Henry Wickham smuggled out about 70,000 rubber tree seeds and brought them to London. These seeds were used to start rubber tree plantations in Southeast Asia, where 85% of the world s supply of natural rubber is produced today. 

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