The Tembusu of Lawn E

This tree was already old when the Singapore Botanic Gardens opened around it in 1859. NParks estimates it at more than 200 years, based on growth patterns compared with other tembusu of known age, which makes it a survivor of whatever forest stood on this ground before the Gardens were laid out. Its most distinctive feature is a single low branch that grows out almost parallel to the ground before curling upward, a shape unusual enough that illustrator Eng Siak Loy chose this exact tree, and this exact limb, to draw on the reverse of Singapore's five-dollar note. It is the only tree ever to appear on a Singapore banknote. Tembusu wood is prized separately from the tree's fame: dense and highly resistant to termites, it has long been used in Malay boat-building and furniture, and the timber's hardness even became a figure of speech in Malay for a person with an unyielding heart. The tree's creamy-white flowers open in clusters and turn yellow with age, most fragrant in the late evening, when they once would have drawn Malayan flying foxes to feed on the fruit that follows. It stands in the free section of the Gardens, an easy walk from the Tanglin Gate, on open lawn rather than behind any barrier, close enough to Swan Lake that most visitors photograph the water first and only notice the tree, and the branch on their banknote, on the way back.