Broad-leafed Mahogany (HT 2003-118)

📷: Brendon Phuah

The Broad-leafed Mahogany is a large tree that can grow up to 40 m with a dense crown. It bears compound leaves that are glossy and dark green with asymmetric leaflets that are crescent-shaped. Being semi-deciduous in nature, it can lose its leaves during pronounced dry spells, but young new leaves quickly open before the old leaves are completely shed. The broad and buttressed trunk has uneven, fissured dark grey bark.

Its flowers are lightly fragrant, pale yellow to greenish in colour and occur in large bunches. The fruit is a distinctive, brown, large and heavy woody pod held upright on its stalk, splitting into five segments to release numerous flat single-winged seeds when mature.

The Broad-leafed Mahogany is a native of Tropical America; it was introduced to Malesia region, which includes Singapore, in 1876 from Honduras. Its timber is valued highly for making furniture, paneling and musical instruments.

As shown in the pictures taken in 2006, this Heritage Tree was located between house numbers 2 and 3 Bayswater Road near Hay Market Road. When the Seletar Aerospace Park was developed in 2008, the houses were demolished, Bayswater Road and Hay Market Road were expunged and the land profile was changed. However, this large Heritage Broad-leafed Mahogany together with the two nearby Heritage Broad-leafed Mahoganies (HT 2003-119 and HT 2017-286) in the vicinity of the new Seletar Aerospace Drive bus-stop number 05, were painstakingly conserved.

These large trees were likely planted in the 1930s, around the time of the development of the Royal Air Force’s Seletar station. This would make this Heritage Tree an estimated around 70 years of age when it was endorsed in 2003.

For more information on this species, please refer to NParks' Flora & Fauna Web profile. ↗ (opens in new tab)