Menara is the name of a yellow meranti (''

Shorea faguetiana ''Shorea faguetiana'' is a species of plant in the family Dipterocarpaceae. Along with other species in the genus ''Shorea'', it is also called '' Yellow Meranti.'' It is native to Borneo, the Malay Peninsula, and Thailand. It is the tallest fl ...

'') tree found in the

Danum Valley Conservation Area Danum Valley Conservation Area is a 438 square kilometres tract of relatively undisturbed lowland dipterocarp forest in Sabah, Malaysia. It has an extensive diversity of tropical flora and fauna, including such species as the rare Bornean ...

, in

Sabah Sabah () is a States and federal territories of Malaysia, state of Malaysia located in northern Borneo, in the region of East Malaysia. Sabah borders the Malaysian state of Sarawak to the southwest and the North Kalimantan province of Indone ...

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...

. It was measured at , which ranks it as the world's tallest known living

tropical The tropics are the regions of Earth surrounding the Equator. They are defined in latitude by the Tropic of Cancer in the Northern Hemisphere at N and the Tropic of Capricorn in the Southern Hemisphere at S. The tropics are also referred to ...

tree In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem, or trunk, usually supporting branches and leaves. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, including only woody plants with secondary growth, plants that are ...

and the tallest known tree on the

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an area ...

n continent. The research team, working with Southeast Asia Rainforest Research Partnership (SEARRP), named the tree “Menara”, which means "tower" in the

Malay language Malay (; ms, Bahasa Melayu, links=no, Jawi alphabet, Jawi: , Rejang script, Rencong: ) is an Austronesian languages, Austronesian language that is an official language of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, and that is also spo ...

due to its towering height. Menara was discovered in August 2018. A research team scanned the tree in August 2018 with a terrestrial laser scanner and drone flights to produce a 3D model. On January 6, 2019, Unding Jami and his team established a measurement for the tree by climbing it and measuring its height using a tape measure. Menara is likely the tallest

flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (), commonly called angiosperms. The term "angiosperm" is derived from the Greek words ('container, vessel') and ('seed'), and refers to those plants th ...

in the world as it is taller than the previous record holder, a

mountain ash Mountain ash may refer to: * ''Eucalyptus regnans'', the tallest of all flowering plants, native to Australia * Mountain-ashes or rowans, varieties of trees and shrubs in the genus ''Sorbus'' See also * Mountain Ash, Rhondda Cynon Taf Mountai ...

(Eucalyptus regnans) in

Tasmania ) , nickname = , image_map = Tasmania in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of Tasmania in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdi ...

that may be 100.5 m tall. Menara weighs nearly 81,500 kilograms not counting its roots. 95% of this mass is located in the trunk, while 5% comes from the 40 meter-wide

crown A crown is a traditional form of head adornment, or hat, worn by monarchs as a symbol of their power and dignity. A crown is often, by extension, a symbol of the monarch's government or items endorsed by it. The word itself is used, partic ...

. The

stem Stem or STEM may refer to: Plant structures * Plant stem, a plant's aboveground axis, made of vascular tissue, off which leaves and flowers hang * Stipe (botany), a stalk to support some other structure * Stipe (mycology), the stem of a mushro ...

is extremely straight, with its center of mass at 28 m above the ground, which is just 0.6 m off from the central vertical axis. This indicates that the tree is highly symmetrical and well-balanced, even though it is sitting on a slope. In 2020,

Pos Malaysia Berhad Pos Malaysia Berhad ( en, Malaysian Post, ) is a postal delivery service in Malaysia, with history dating back to early 1800s. Services Pos Malaysia provides postal and related services, namely: * Standard Mail (Flexipack Domestic, Standard M ...

release a stamp set featuring Menara. The set also includes a

miniature sheet A souvenir sheet or miniature sheet is a postage stamp or a small group of postage stamps still attached to the sheet on which they were printed. They may be either regular issues that just happen to be printed in small groups (typical of many ea ...

18 centimetres in length, making it the largest stamp ever released by Pos Malaysia.

References

{{Reflist Individual trees in Malaysia