From Seed to Seed:
Plant Science for K-8 Educators

Digging Deeper

Chew on This!

The sapodilla tree of southern Mexico produces a type of latex used in a product familiar to all of us. In Mexico, the substance is called chicle. Can you guess the product?

Did you guess it? The answer is chewing gum! In the mid-1800s, General Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana came to the United States. (He was the commander responsible for the massacre at the Alamo.) He brought with him a supply of chicle, the dried sap of the sapodilla tree. For centuries chicle had been chewed by the Aztecs and, later, the Mexicans. It was a tasteless substance that was chewed but not swallowed.

The general brought some chicle to a local inventor, Thomas Adams. Initially, Adams tried to transform chicle into rubber for tires. Although this venture was unsuccessful, Adams persisted. Noting that the general chewed the substance, Adams began to market chicle as a substitute for the then-popular flavored paraffin chewing wax, and a new product, chewing gum, was born.

Several manufacturers began producing chewing gum. In 1910, Henry Fleer perfected a candy-coated chewing gum and named it "Chiclets."

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