Natural rubber at least showed promise as rubber sources, include the rubber fig ("Ficus elastica"), Panama rubber tree ("Castilla elastica"), various spurges ("Euphorbia" spp.), lettuce ("Lactuca" species), the related "Scorzonera tau-saghyz", various "Taraxacum" species, including common dandelion ("Taraxacum officinale") and Russian dandelion ("Taraxacum kok-saghyz"), and perhaps most importantly for its hypoallergenic properties, guayule ("Parthenium argentatum"). The term gum rubber is sometimes applied to the tree-obtained version of natural rubber in order to distinguish it from the synthetic version. The first use of rubber was by the indigenous cultures of Mesoamerica. The earliest archeological evidence of the use of natural latex from the
Ficus lyrata Ficus lyrata Ficus lyrata, commonly known as the fiddle-leaf fig, is a species of flowering plant in the mulberry and fig family Moraceae. It is native to western Africa, from Cameroon west to Sierra Leone, where it grows in lowland tropical rainforest. It is a banyan fig ("Ficus" subgenus "Urostigma") that commonly starts life as an epiphyte high in the crown of another tree; it then sends roots down to the ground which envelop the trunk of the host tree and slowly strangle it. It can also grow as a free-standing tree on its own, growing up to tall. The