Why Children Love these Tropical Trees

I am sure you have wrestled with the task of balancing screen time and physical activity. If you are a parent, you have an even more challenging mission to instil a positive lifestyle. Living in a Singapore, a metropolis with a tropical climate, it is all too easy to stay indoors in the cool air-conditioning. However if you need some persuasion to venture outside and get close to nature, let me tell you why local children love these four amazing tropical trees.

Red seeds of The Saga Tree

The saga tree sheds red seeds, hence its more common name the Red Bead Tree. Whilst some parts of the world, these red seeds turn them into jewelry, my association with these smooth seeds is a childhood game. This traditional game involved the skill of your little pinky; use it to flick one seed to the other without hitting or touching any other seeds in the cluster. The more seeds you have the longer the game. Like a game of marbles, each start with an agreed number of seeds and by the end of the game, some will have won more. Those who lose will go hunting for more red seeds. This tree is a favourite with children.

The red seeds stand out on the ground

The red seeds still attached to their pods on the tree

The trees reach up to 20m and opens in a rounded shape to provide a good amount of shade. As with all tropical trees, they have buttress roots to hold them firmly to the ground during thunderstorms. Notice in the photo how much canopy it offers. Although rain trees can grow up to 30m, in the third picture these saga trees stand taller than the majestic rain tree.

Its scientific name is adenanthera pavonina. These trees were taken at Alexandra Road, just next to Queensway Shopping Centre.

The Umbrella Tree, aka Rain Tree

You got a glimpse of the rain tree in the previous photo. It’s one of the hundreds you can see in Singapore, whether in residential areas or lining busy roads.

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They can grow up to 30m in height and 20-30m in width. As mentioned before in my article about shades and Singapore, they open majestically like umbrellas and offer untold respite from the harsh sun in Singapore. If you venture outdoors in our hot and humid climate, they offer so much shade they are a great place to gather. You can organise picnics. The adults have a chat, and the children play chase. The younger rain trees are even short enough for some to climb.

The older the tree, the taller they get. These trees have to be cut back regularly; otherwise they can be uprooted in a heavy thunderstorm; falling on cars, blocking roads and hurting unwitting passers-by. Sadly, a couple of the taller trees were felled since I took the photo.

Rain Tree by an overhead bridge

Its scientific name is Samanea saman. These trees were taken at Tanglin Road, Bukit Timah Road and Marymount Road.

The Maze Tree aka Banyan Tree

If you do a search for amazing trees, you will get a long list of the most amazing, most wonderful trees, unique and spectacular trees in the world. All will show pictures of the beauty, height, age, shape, colour of the trees around the world. These are a gift from nature. Indeed they are all amazing trees. I cannot name the most amazing tree. But the banyan tree is one that amazes me. I call it the Maze Tree in my book, Secrets of the Great Fire Tree.

In the photo below, there are four banyan trees. From afar, they look like trees with thick trunks.

As I described it in my book, vines drop from the branches and eventually form secondary trunks. As the tree grows older, more trunks are formed and a complex array form around the main trunk. Here are two pictures to compare side by side. Can you tell which is the younger tree?

Stand under one and you will be wowed by its size and beauty. It is every child’s dream to climb up a tree like this, with its many branches and matured aerial roots. You can let your imagination fly here: it could be a trap, a secret hideout, an ancient tree that speaks to you. Even young children will enjoy weaving in and out of the trunks.

The scientific name of the Banyan Tree is Ficus benghalensis. These trees were taken at Alexandra road, Kallang MRT station.

The Boat Tree aka African Tulip Tree

This tree looks innocuous. It doesn’t have the grand canopy of the rain tree, neither does it have the trunks of the banyan tree. If you are taking a ride and you see the occasional scatter of red flowers amongst a wall of tropical trees, like the photo here, you’ve seen an African Tulip Tree.

Look at the two close-up photos. The brown finger-like moieties maturing on the tree win the hearts of children. When they are ready, they fall to the ground. If you wander under one of these on a dry day, you will find loads of them on the ground. They are shaped like a sampan, hence the nickname Boat Tree. If you remove the seeds within, and leave them to dry out, you have yourself a sampan.

Like pine cones, these fruits open up when dry and close when damp. See the photos below to follow the drying process. These ‘sampans’ have given little children untold pleasure at water play. In Singapore, after a heavy rainfall, the storm drains gush with rainwater. This is when older children conduct boat races and see whose boat survives the currents and travel down to the bottom.

In my previous article on Cannonball and Buah Keluak Trees, I described the source of inspiration for my book, Secrets of the Great Fire Tree. As you can see here, these are just four of the many amazing trees you see in Singapore. I would have loved to include all of them in my book. However, in the end only two made a humble appearance in the story. I have already mentioned the banyan tree as the Maze tree. If it were up to you, which of these trees would you use in the story?

This article was first published 15 Apr 2019. Updated 23 July 2023.

*I would like to thank Ria from Wildlife Singapore for her work and making her amazing photos available for free download.

*If you want to find out more about these trees, NParks is a good source of information.

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Justine Laismith’s Books:

Left behind in the mountains, a desperate boy harnesses a cure from the Great Fire Tree. Even when its dark powers brings tragedy, he believes it will bring his mother home again. For readers 11-14 years. More info

A harried mother wants to stay one step ahead of her children’s antics and experiments with the Magic Mixer. A machine invented by a female scientist and engineer, it gives her special animal abilities. But choosing the right animal proves more difficult that she thought. For readers for 6-9 years. More info

A Sacred and Healing Tree

The Cannonball Tree is a tropical tree with anti-cancer, anti-bacterial and antifungal properties. A tall tree reaching to ~30m, the trunk bears its flowers. From afar, these delicate flowers give the impression someone has wrapped a voile round its trunk.

Close up, you can see clusters of yellow buds sticking out of the thick trunk near ground level. When in bloom, the petals are red. On this day of visit, the tree has just dropped its petals.

A few months later, the blooms were still not as prolific, but you can see a few more  blooms in this picture below. These fragrant flowers are used in perfume and cosmetics. In India the trees are planted near Hindu temples because the flowers look like the hood of the snake round Lord Shiva’s neck.

Notice the thin branches bearing the flowers. When the tree bears fruit, they dangle from these thin twigs off the trunk. From humble beginnings, the fruit grows to the size of a cannon. Hence its name. Below you can see the different maturing stages of the fruit. The mature fruits have hard shells, useful for making household items such as containers.

Cannonball Tree

In my middle-grade book, I described the fruit dropping to the ground when ripe. On this day when I visited, I was lucky enough to find some on the ground. With the size that they are, they make quite a mess on the pedestrian walkway. If they should fall on the concrete pavement and not the grass verge, the shells crack open. They give out a pungent smell of stagnant rotting water. I had to hold my breath when I took these photos. Needless to say I did not hang around to take too many pictures.

Cannonball fruit

While I love this tree for its unique flowering position, it is not the shadiest tree for a hot country like Singapore (see my previous blog on Rain Trees). It is a very tall tree, but all its leaves culminate at the top. Here are a couple of pictures to demonstrate how tall they are. You can also see how they form part of the backdrop of city living in Singapore, lining the edges of the roads to provide shade for pedestrians.

The scientific name of the Cannonball Tree is Couroupita guianensis. If you want more information of the tree, NParks is a great resource of tropical fauna. If you visit Singapore and want to see it in person, it can be found in the Singapore Botanic Gardens and Gardens-By-the-Bay. These trees were taken along Tanglin Road at the junction just before Tanglin Mall.

My book, Secrets of the Great Fire Tree, describes a tree central to the plot of the story. This tree does not exist. However the flowering position of the Cannonball tree is so unique it had to feature in my story. Its medicinal properties fitted the plot. I combined this with another fascinating tropical tree and created a hybrid. I used the Cannonball tree’s unusual trunk to create the appearance. My fictional tree is named the Great Fire Tree.

If you’ve enjoyed this post, then you might be interested in another two local trees also mentioned in my book. I’ve described them in a previous blog about tropical trees.

This article was first published 1 Apr 2019. Updated 30 Apr 2023.

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Justine Laismith’s Books:

Left behind in the mountains, a desperate boy harnesses a cure from the Great Fire Tree. Even when its dark powers brings tragedy, he believes it will bring his mother home again. For readers 11-14 years. More info

A harried mother wants to stay one step ahead of her children’s antics and experiments with the Magic Mixer. A machine invented by a female scientist and engineer, it gives her special animal abilities. But choosing the right animal proves more difficult that she thought. For readers for 6-9 years. More info