It started with me taking a picture of the plant at Taman Jurong Park. It really look unique with its soaring canopy and its slender and green trunk. I have never seen such Jurassic looking plant before.
The foliage is so small that I could not make up what it looks like. There is nothing else except the shape of the tree and the tree trunk itself. Usually one would want to find out its leaf shape, fruit, flower, trunk and overall shape of the tree to identify it. With just the tree trunk, it is hardly possible to identify the plant.
The first guess is that it is a giant Papaya as the trunk sure looks like it. However, the leaves does not have the shape of a papaya. Moreover, I have not seen a Caricaceae that is five story tall.
The next guess is a palm tree as it also leaves similar marks on the trunk. However palm leaves does not spread out like this tree. Its stalk also leaves a mark on a trunk like a ring. Again it is ruled out.
The next guess is that it is a Fern. Problem is that fern branches does not drop off like that. Again, the result is ruled out.
Well, that leaves me with no clue to what type of plant it is. As usual, I just do a picture search with The Plant Observatory as it is a web site that shows Singaporean Plants. The result is blank.
Next, I tried the Wellgrow site which is a Malaysian plant distributor. It turns out negative also.
Finally, I tried NParks website. Unfortunately, NPark showed its photo in a 2x2 cm size. You have to click on it to see a larger picture. There are thousands of pictures available in the tree category. Searching pictures with NParks is never easy. I usually missed the very plant that I look for. The initial result is again negative.
Finally I tried TopTropicals, a site that shows many tropical plants. Browsing through it usually take a long time as it has many thousands of pictures. The result is not fruitful.
I have no choice but to KIV the search.
On and off, I tried to find the plant again by browsing the few web sites mentioned above. The reason is that even with pictures, it may not match what I want to see. For example NParks shows a flower picture, a fruit picture and a young plant. What I am looking for is the tree trunk picture. Even by looking at the picture, there is no way to link it to the plant I am searching for unless I copy the Scientific name and then do a Google search with it. There is no way this is going to work unless I feel that it is remotely similar to the plant I wanted to find.
I posted the plant picture in iNaturalist and Noah Project hoping that some one has seen it before. There is no respond also. Thus, this item is left with the whole list of TBA (to be advised/identified).
I then chanced across the same tree in Hort Park recently. It renewed my motivation to do a search again as I managed to take a large picture of its leaves.
Searching through the picture catalog again slowly, I managed to find NPark picture on the plant. It may not look similar but at least its leaves structure matches. The picture showed a young plant that look like a shrub but since it is categorized in the Tree section, I decided to do a Google search with the name. When the Google search result appears, I am overjoyed. The first few pictures show a grown tree and it looks very similar to the one I saw.
Usually, I will confirm whether it is available in Singapore first. As mentioned before the tree is native in America. It turned out that NParks has it listed in the Heritage Tree registry. Well, that concludes my search. One plant specie is added to my plant collection.
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