The Kempas of Corner House

Kempas trees grow plank buttresses up to six metres tall, walls of root that hold a very tall trunk upright in swamp ground that gives nothing to grip. This one runs to 38.6 metres behind Corner House, on a girth of 4.5 metres, and the heritage register makes a point of saying the public can walk right up to it. The species is endangered and it is local. Koompassia malaccensis belongs to the lowland freshwater peat-swamp forests that once covered a good deal of this island and now barely survive on it, so a Kempas of this size inside a city is a reminder of the forest type Singapore built over rather than a specimen brought in from somewhere else. The name travelled in the unusual direction. Kempas is the Malay word; botanists Latinised it into Koompassia and handed it back as the genus, adding malaccensis for Malacca. There is a Kempas Road in Bendemeer named after the tree. The Gardens hold a second gazetted Kempas near the Fernery, about half a kilometre away. This is the other one, behind Corner House by the EJH Corner House gate, gazetted in 2015 and dedicated to the Mingxin Foundation. Nobody has dated it. The girth is on record, the planting is not. If you know when it went in, tell us.