Where does natural rubber come from?

Workers make a thin cut in the tree's bark and collect the milky white latex that drips out. Indigenous peoples of Central and South America used rubber for thousands of years, including for the balls in Mesoamerican ballgames. In 1876 Englishman Henry Wickham shipped about 70,000 rubber seeds from Brazil to London's Kew Gardens, and seedlings were sent to British colonies in Asia. Today Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam are among the largest producers of natural rubber. About 40 percent of the rubber used worldwide is natural, with the rest synthetic.