The Penaga Laut of the Botany Centre
The Botany Centre at the Singapore Botanic Gardens was built around this tree on purpose, its floor plan bent to leave it standing exactly where it already grew. NParks lists it a Heritage Tree, girth 6.9 metres, native to Singapore's coastline and now endangered in the wild here, more than a hundred years old by nobody's precise count. Penaga laut, or Alexandrian laurel, keeps a short thick trunk and a wide crown, and this one's bark has fissured dark brown with age. Bird's Nest Ferns and a large Tiger Orchid grow directly on its branches, and Oriental Pied Hornbills have been seen picking at climbing figs on the trunk, an ordinary reminder that one old tree can carry a small ecosystem of its own. It stands on Level 1 of the Botany Centre, opposite the auditorium, free to see any day the Gardens are open, and easy to find precisely because the building itself was designed around it.
From people who stood here
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Getting there
Singapore Botanic Gardens, Level 1 of the Botany Centre (opposite the Botany Centre Auditorium)
You can recognise it by the fissured dark bark and the ferns and orchid growing directly on its branches. It stands on Level 1 of the Botany Centre, opposite the auditorium, in a building built around it.
Botanic Gardens MRT (Circle/Downtown lines), about 10-15 minute walk to the Botany Centre
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from. The story was written with AI from these sources, and readers who know the tree correct it.
- In the official register: NParks Heritage Trees
- heritagetrees.nparks.gov.sg
- sbg.nparks.gov.sg