The Chengal Pasir of Cluny Park Way

Thirty-five and a half metres of tree on a trunk 2.6 metres round. The Chengal Pasir grows almost straight up and spends nothing on width, which is why Singapore planted so many of them along its roads, and why its timber has a reputation for outlasting teak. Several grow on the same stretch of lawn along Cluny Park Way. This is the largest of them and, by the heritage register's account, the biggest of its species anywhere in the Botanic Gardens. It was gazetted in 2015 and dedicated to the LU Foundation, one of the donors to the Garden City Fund. The species has been in the Gardens' books for over a century: J.W. Anderson listed Hopea odorata in his Index of Plants in 1912. That records the species growing here, not this tree being planted, and no date exists for the individual, so its age is properly unknown rather than merely vague. If you know when it went in, tell us. In the wild, Hopea odorata is in retreat across a range running from Bangladesh and Myanmar through Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam to the top of Peninsular Malaysia. There is something odd about standing in front of a threatened forest tree that this city plants along its ordinary streets.