The Teak of the Botany Centre

Teak needs a dry season, and Singapore has never had one. NParks says so on this tree's own record: the species struggles in a climate without an annual drought. This one dates from 1884 by NParks' own dating, which puts it at about 140 years, and it has spent all of them growing in conditions its species is not built for. Girth 2.9 metres, height 20.6 metres. Tectona grandis belongs to the monsoon forests of Myanmar, Thailand, India and Indochina, where it drops its leaves through the dry months. Singapore does not supply them. The tree stands instead along Office Ring Road beside the Botany Centre, which is about as far from a monsoon forest as a teak is likely to get. Its timber is the reason anyone knows the word. Teak is loaded with natural oils that see off termites and shrug off water, which is why it has decked ships for centuries and why teak furniture tends to outlive the people who buy it. Plantations across the tropics exist for that one property. This one was never cut. It has stood since 1884 and the only thing anybody has ever taken from it is a measurement. For a species valued almost entirely by the cubic metre, that counts as an unusual career.