My special tree

Some of the many trees in the Garden City that is Singapore have hidden stories of people who tended them, benefited from them, worked under them, slept under them or loved them. An ongoing exhibition at the National Library captures these tales and relationships between Singaporeans and their special trees.

Singapore, Very Old Tree is spearheaded by freelance writer Adeline Chia and artist Robert Zhao, both 32, who worked with two researchers from last December to unearth these individuals and their stories.

Ms Chia says: "Although people know Singapore as a Garden City, the image is ultimately an impersonal one of anonymous trees and gardeners. We want to give these gardeners faces and names."

They trawled through local nature blogs and National Parks Board (NParks) publications, and approached NParks for contacts of tree lovers and community gardeners. The team also went through newspaper archives for tree-related stories, tapped on their networks of friends and put out calls on social media.

Three months later, they had a list of about 80 trees, from which they picked 30 for the project.

Some of them are majestic old specimens, such as the angsana near the entrance of the Shangri-La Rasa Sentosa Resort. It is believed to have been planted in the 1880s by the British when the artillery battalion was stationed on the island, then known as Pulau Blakang Mati. With a girth of 10.2m, it is also the biggest angsana tree here. It has been cared for by gardener Mohd Yusri Abdullah for more than 20 years.

Other trees involved dramatic rescues and student activism, such as the Malayan Banyans next to the Goodman Arts Centre and at the Tanglin Trust School. Both were saved following calls by ex-students for their preservation.

Many other stories feature "humble and relatively young trees, never quite imperilled", says Ms Chia. "But we included them because they meant something to someone." Cobbler Goh Cheng Lam, 70, is fond of a Bodhi tree in Sungei Road, under which he has been operating for the past five years. Apart from giving him shade, it is also where his friends and regular customers hang out.

A home-grown rambutan tree reminds nature lover Goh Yue Yun, 57, of her late mother who planted it. "My late mother used to fertilise the tree with her diluted urine," she says. Ms Chia and Mr Zhao say some of the challenges they encountered in their project include pinning down the trees' ages and getting full views of the trees in photographs.

On the trees' ages, Ms Chia says: "We needed to rely on recollection by witnesses, look at old pictures to see if the trees were there before or compare a specimen of similar size with a known age."

Mr Zhao says most of the images were difficult to capture because the trees are "just too big". "Even with a wide-angle lens, I had to stand pretty far back."

He took the black-and-white pictures with the trees seen in full and the humans tiny to emphasise the contrast in scale. His illustrator-friend Sokkuan Tye hand-tinted the images in vintage-postcard style.

The project, mostly funded by the Singapore Memory Project's irememberSG Fund as part of the SG50 celebrations, also consists of a publication - a booklet of stories, a set of 30 postcards of the exhibited images and a map showing about 20 interesting trees in Singapore. The publication will be sold only a year from now as part of the irememberSG funding agreement.

Mr Zhao says: "The work is about spending a little more time considering something that is ubiquitous in the Singapore landscape. While we celebrate Singapore's Golden Jubilee, it is important to remember that some trees on our island easily surpass 100 years."

brynasim@sph.com.sg

Do you have an old tree that means something to you? E-mail stlife@sph.com.sg

Irresistible draw of durian trees

At least twice a year, Mr Teo Teah On, 66, dons a construction helmet, construction boots, a long-sleeved shirt and pants, and heads into the Bukit Panjang forest at night to search for durians.

Alone, he sets off at 9pm from his flat along Jelapang Road in Bukit Panjang and treks about 3km into the jungle.

All he carries are a gunny sack for the durians, a torchlight and a wooden stick to fend off wild boars and snakes.

He has no fear, only immense enthusiasm for the potential loot out there.

"Once I know durian season is here, I just need to go out and pick the durians. I can't sleep knowing that they are lying there, waiting for me," he says with a laugh.

Mr Teo, a father of two who runs a carpentry business, has been doing this for seven years now. It all began when he was exercising in his neighbourhood and came close to the fringe of the forest.

He saw people emerging from it with gunny sacks filled to the brim with the thorny, pungent fruit.

As he is a lover of the fruit and a believer in durians that are picked from trees growing in the wild ("they don't have added fertilisers or chemicals"), his interest was immediately piqued.

The durian pickers he met told him there were about 100 durian trees scattered throughout the wilderness.

Previously, he would buy durians from one of his friends who picked them from the forests here.

Since he started collecting the fruit himself, he has been watching the durian season like a hawk.

He says the trees usually flower twice a year and the fruit falls about 100 days after that. Older trees between 60 and 70 years old can bear up to 200 fruits each time, while younger trees around 30 years old bear about 50 fruits each.

How does he know these things?

"I just do," says Mr Teo, who adds that once you start tracking these things and talking to people, you will learn.

"Walking in and out of the forest is a good workout. You will sweat a lot."

He saw the durian trees flowering in March this year, so he estimates the fruit fall to be in July.

He says poor weather conditions last year meant no fruit for the pickers, so they are all hoping for a good harvest this year.

It is unclear who has authority over the part of the forest where these durian trees grow. Under National Parks Board guidelines, it is illegal to pick up fallen fruit in places under its purview.

But the four other pickers Mr Teo usually hangs out with pick durians for personal consumption and not to sell. There is no competition among them either.

"We are all friends," says Mr Teo. "We meet in the forest, sit down for a chat, pick the durians, chat some more and then we head home."

There is no particular durian tree that they seek out because every tree's fruit has a slightly different taste, he says.

The sizes of the durians in the Bukit Panjang forest and the colour of their flesh vary, says Mr Teo.

But the trophy durians are those picked from a self-dubbed "XO Tree", a name referring to a popular variety of durians famous for its slightly alcoholic aftertaste.

"You can't tell which tree this is. You know only after you've eaten the fruit," he says.

On each trip, he usually collects up to 20 durians, weighing about 10kg.

Once home, he and his wife, Mrs Teo Cheng Hway, 58, set about opening the shells and getting the flesh packed into air-tight boxes, before tucking them away in the freezer. Stored this way, the fruit can last for up to six months, says Mr Teo.

Some boxes are refrigerated and consumed within days.

"I will complain that there's no space to put anything else and about the slight odour for those few months," says Mrs Teo, who helps her husband with his business. "But I like to eat durians and since the ones my husband brings back are the only ones I eat, I just have to deal with it."

The saga of childhood memories

A saga tree in Mount Emily park holds special childhood memories for Ms Kong Yin Ying , 19.

Ms Kong, who is waiting to enter university, recalls competing with her older brother Jun Yin, 20, to find odd-shaped and odd-coloured saga seeds. This was years ago when the siblings were four and five years old respectively.

They were then attending Mount Emily Kindergarten and the tree was right behind it.

"The tree was enormous to me then. It towered above me and its roots were many and large," says Ms Kong.

But its presence did not intimidate the siblings, who would run towards it after school.

"We dug around the tree's roots with our bare hands, competing to see who would find the oddball saga seeds first," she says.

"We were not interested in the normal red ones. We were keen only on those that either had flat edges or had orange-yellow hues."

Whoever found one would call out to the other and they would gaze at the strangely formed seed with a mixture of curiosity and wonder. They would usually leave the seed behind, though.

Explains Ms Kong: "What made things exciting was the process of searching for the seeds, rather than keeping them."

She believes there are only a handful of "really cool ones" that she has stashed away "somewhere at home".

After their kindergarten days, she and her brother pretty much stopped going to the tree, except once when they were in primary school because they happened to be in the area. So for nearly 10 years, Ms Kong had not seen the tree. This year, she has re-visited the tree twice as part of the Singapore, Very Old Tree project, and says it reminded her of a "simple, fun part" of her life.

"As my brother and I dug for the seeds, we were sharing moments together. Life was not complicated then. No sibling rivalry, just quiet companionship," she says. Today, the Pat's Schoolhouse branch in Mount Emily stands in place of the siblings' kindergarten.

Principal Melina Quek, 53, says her teachers are familiar with the tree. Its large canopy provides shade for the children when they organise outdoor picnics or classes. But the little ones are not allowed to root about for saga seeds.

"Children are curious and we don't want them to put the seeds into their mouths or stuff them up their noses," says Ms Quek.

Ms Kong, on the other hand, has no qualms about taking her children there in future to do what she did.

"If this tree remains, I'll definitely come here with my kids. Being unafraid of nature and all its dirty aspects is an important part of being a child," she says.

A favourite of bridal couples

Once there was a tree and engaged couples loved the tree. Some days, these couples would come and take their wedding photos there. And they were happy.

Photographer George Wong, 37, was introduced to this casuarina tree at Upper Seletar Reservoir by a couple about 10 years ago.

They had told him that this tree was one of their dating spots and wanted it captured in their wedding photos.

When he saw the tree, Mr Wong was struck by its beauty. "It has a nice shape and is exactly between two benches. The background - the reservoir - is also clean, so the various elements make for a good picture."

Over the years, he says, word spread about the thriving casuarina to the extent that it has been called "the wedding tree". Since his first shot there, he says he has snapped more than 100 couples at the tree.

It is such a popular site that he recalls waiting 30 minutes one weekend because several couples were waiting to have their pictures taken there.

"Everyone is on a tight schedule, so among the photographers, we'll usually just signal to one another and say something like, 'Bro, I'm next, yeah?'" says Mr Wong.

Another photographer, Mr Seah Yu Hsin, 43, is also aware of this "wedding tree". He first came across the tree during a run around the reservoir about eight years ago and says he made a "mental capture" of its potential for a photo shoot.

A few months later, a couple told him that they wanted an outdoor location for their pre-wedding photo shoot that had natural elements. He recommended the spot to them and has been shooting couples there since.

"Whether you take the pictures by day or by night, they always look good," he says.

According to him, the tree's prominence spread thanks to social media because people are quick to post their pre-wedding pictures online.

One of the couples he shot in 2009 found out about the tree that way.

Bank executive Cassandra Cheok, 35, recalls seeing other couples' pictures with the tree online. While the tree holds no significance to her, she says she found it "very elegant and photogenic". Together with her then-fiance and their golden retriever, she had her pre-wedding pictures taken there.

"It was the first and only time I'd been there," she says. So, for years, the tree gave marrying couples a spot for a beautiful photo and the couples were happy. But not really. Some couples insist on not having their pictures taken there, says Mr Seah. "They will tell me that everyone goes there now," he explains.

Over the years, the wedding tree has witnessed much change. Mr Wong recalls there used to be a playground a short distance away from the tree which was also a photo-worthy spot, but that is no more.

Also nearby is a little stone path that leads into the water. That area has since been barricaded, possibly because the steps are worn and unsafe.

But the area near the tree is still a good spot for relaxing and photo taking.

Muses Mr Wong: "Things around the tree have changed, but it has stayed the same."

And the tree seems happy.

This article was first published on May 17, 2015.
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