| Tuesday, March 23, 1999: The Straits Times | See the sad tree it has become in 2007 |
| $10,000 to move and transplant rare tree |
| OVERNIGHT,
a 17-m tree sprouted at the Botanic Gardens. It stands just inside its new Gateway entrance, near the fountain. However, for the last 100 years or so, its home had been a patch in the central catchment forest near the Upper Peirce Reservoir. It had to make way for new water tanks to be built on the land. So the National Parks Board (NParks) set out to transplant operation that cost over $10,000 and took months to plan, prepare and execute. All that trouble for one tree? Ms Sharon Chan, senior manager of nature reserves management at NParks, said that the tree is possibly the largest specimen of the Dracaena maingayi, a rare find here. In all, NParks saved about 500 plants and trees from the area that was cleared. Some were transplanted immediately, while others were moved to nurseries for re-planting later on. Extra special care was taken to move the Dracaena, which was thought to be found only around Labrador Park area, said Ms Chan. |
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The job of transplanting the 25-tonne tree, roots and all, fell to Mrs Camelia Mahendran, assistant manager of the Singapore Botanic Gardens (management).
She is a veteran of over 20 transplant operations.
"The others were much easier because the trees were moved within the Botanic Gardens. This involved much more co-ordination and planning."
To prepare for the move, the tree had to be pruned.
From its original 20-m height, it was trimmed to about 17m. Apart from making it easier to fit onto the trailer, without having too many branches protuding, pruning also cuts water loss through the leaves, she said.
Then a trench was dug around the base of the tree to cut down the spread of its roots, which do not grow below one metre or so, she added.
"All these help condition the tree for the move, which can be quite traumatic."
Timber stakes supported the Y-shaped trunk and kept it from splitting during the "trenching".
For the actual move, a heavy-lift crane capable of carrying up to 50 tonnes was brought in, together with a trailer large enough to hold the tree.
"The root base alone was about 3.2m in diameter," she said.
The trunk was wrapped in gunny sacks and bags of coco peat were laid on the trailer like cushions to keep the tree from being damaged enroute.
The journey to the Botanic Gardens could only start after midnight, so as not to cause any traffic problems, she said.
Two Traffic Police outriders escorted the trailer.
The next morning, the crane lifted the tree into its new home -- a hole about 1.2m deep, prepared with a layer of good topsoil.
Guide ropes and pieces of pipe were formed into a frame to hold the tree in place until the roots took hold and new leaves sprouted, she said.
By the time the new Gateway entrance was opened last December, the ropes could be removed -- leaving no one any wiser that the 100-year-old tree had been an outsider until recently.
Also reported in: "Moving Experience" -- an article by Camelia Marican, published in Gardenwise, Vol 13, July 1999 (The newsletter of the Singapore Botanic Gardens).