bodhi trees are fascinating. my mother likes them for the buddhist connection, and they are very tenacious. we recently found a sapling at my grandmother's old house, growing out of a water pipe on the roof. when they tried to remove it, the roots were so long the attempt put one in mind of a conjurer pulling ribbon chains out of a hat. we've transplanted it to a large flower pot, and it puts out new leaves daily in our garden.

there is a tree in jalan naung that is on the singapore

heritage trees register! actually i've known for a while that the tree was protected in some way (i can see that the trunk is tagged and its base enclosed by a railing ) but it stands in a fenced and padlocked vacant lot on our street, and one can't really get close enough to look at it, and, i'm afraid, i have been too lazy to climb around the drain at the back of the estate to get a better look. (at our age, that sort of thing is certain to be fatal.) however, yesterday i looked it up on the heritage tree register, and it is a binjai tree, a species of mango, (scientific name manifera caesia). it stands at 16m high and 3.4m in girth, which is not in itself especially remarkable (many of the trees on the register are 20 meters and taller, and quite as wide in the trunk - the tallest is a 47-metre-high malayan terminalia in the botanic gardens. though i don't mean to suggest that height alone makes the tree remarkable.)


other trees on the register notable for height:

  • 40m west indian locust tree (hymenaea courbaril) on instana grounds. (according to wikipedia, also known as the brazilian cherry tree)
  • 45m red-leaved pulai tree (alstonia angustiloba) on st john’s island
  • 36m raintree (samanea saman) at fort canning
  • 35m angsana (pterocarpus indicus) at oxley rise
  • 43m tembusu (fagraea fragrans) in the botanic gardens. (the tembusu being the tree depicted on the five dollar notes)
  • 31m african mahogony (khaya nyassica) at guillemard
  • 33m sea beam (parinari corymbosa) in the national lib (would that be the stamford rd or victoria st?) carpark.



    look on this list to see if there are any heritage trees in your neighbourhood. most of them are in fort canning, sentosa and the botanic gardens, though there are some on residential estates too, and near public buildings, like a brazil nut behind the commuicable disease centre and sea figs near various libraries, hospitals and parks.