Tropical Malaysia   Darrin Wu
  Aug 26, 2006 23:00 PDT 

Hi,

...I'm from sunny Malaysia. A little about myself, I'm 30 years old guy 
who loves trees...especially huge and tall trees, they are living history!!

I came here thru reading a thread by
Roman Dial about his exploits in Sabah which is a part of Malaysia.
I must say...fantastic job! 

Well, just to let you guys *know*...Malaysia has some pretty huge and
tall trees and the Koompassia Excelsa is indeed one of the tallest trees
in the world! I hope Roman finds a 90+m specimen.

I'm not in Sabah, only Peninsular Malaysia, used to live in Sarawak for
a while...both have grand rainforests too, although I have a friend who
hails from Tawau, great chap...and he says he knows about that
Koompassia that was supposed to be 90m until Roman disproved
that...maybe it was 90m but trees isolated and exposed for years will
invariably suffer crown damage**


Darrin
Tropical giants   Darrin Wu
  Aug 29, 2006 22:08 PDT 

I have been reading some of the post here, quite interesting. By the way
does anyone here have experiences with tropical trees? The largest tree
so far found in my country is a giant 1,300+ year old tree with a girth
of 55 feet or around 16 meters and a height of 65 meters. And the
tallest tropical tree in the world is the koompassia excelsa tree, also
native here which probably is 90-100m high...although nobody knows the
real record...officially its 87 meters I think.

And its a huge, beautiful tree as well with very wide buttress usually
several meters high...and decidious by nature.

It seems Roman Dial whom I believe is a member here has some experience
with climbing and measuring the giant trees here.

 
RE: Tropical giants   Darrin Wu
  Aug 30, 2006 22:01 PDT 
ENTS

...You know, on the topic of old growth forest, I have quite "some"
experience here, usually Taman Negara which is the main national park
and said to be the oldest rainforest in the world at 130 million years
would be where I go. But I don't think anyone actually went there to
study the trees in the 434,000 ha forest. The giant tree is actually
located right along the rugged border, and found only in 1998.

In a single hectare, there might be 200-300+ species of trees and the
average age would be 100 years with many emergants going on 300-400
years. I have monitored a patch for 6 years and hardly seen any change,
even the palms don't seem to change in size.

Nobody can really guess the age because of the lack of tree growth rings
in a tropical climate, but the data so far is they are really slow
growing, like around 1 mm a year.

For a tree to achieve 55 feet girth and dbh of over 5 meters ,this
species being known for its slow growth rate, I would actually guess it
is closer to 2000 years old, probably at least in the region of 1700
years old.

Regards.

Darrin