The Mengkulang of the Gardens' Jungle

In 1908 Henry Ridley described a species new to science, and the material came off this tree. Heritiera elata is pinned to it: that is what a type specimen is, the individual the name itself refers back to. Ridley was the Botanic Gardens' first Director, and his note on these trees reads like a man who already had a favourite. There are two or three of these fine trees in the Gardens' Jungle, he wrote. The finest is a conspicuous object by the plant sheds. The Gardens' Jungle is still there, a patch of remnant rainforest held inside the Botanic Gardens, and it has produced a run of type specimens over the years. A 2022 paper from the National University of Singapore, cataloguing the plants first described from Singapore ground, lists this species among them. The trunk is the giveaway. Its plank buttresses fold vertically, in pleats running up from the base, a feature unique to the species. Four and a half metres round, twenty-six metres tall, standing along Lower Ring Road near the Bandstand. Its age is genuinely unknown. NParks says it is probably older than the Gardens, which were laid out in 1859, but that is an impression rather than a measurement, and nobody has put a number on it. If you know better, tell us.