Behold the giant. The world’s tallest known tropical tree has been discovered in a rainforest in Malaysia, measuring a whopping 89.5 metres.

Gaming enthusiasts may be familiar with the species of tree – Yellow Meranti (Shorea faguetiana) – which can be grown in Minecraft.

David Coomes of the University of Cambridge and his colleagues discovered the behemoth in one of Malaysia’s last remaining pristine wildernesses – the Maliau Basin Conservation Area, known as Sabah’s Lost World.


A laser scanner attached to the researchers’ aeroplane detected the tree (see below) while capturing 3D images of the rainforest as part of a project to map the region’s biodiversity.

Measuring the height of the tree was a big task. A local tree-climber clambered to the top with a tape measure to check it. While still at the top, he sent a text message to the researchers waiting at the bottom: “I don’t have time to take photos using a good camera because there’s an eagle around that keeps trying to attack me and also lots of bees flying around.”

Michele Dalponte

The tree is almost as tall as London’s Big Ben clock tower and beats the previous record holder in the tropics by 1.2 metres. However, it is not the tallest tree in the world – that title is held by a 115-metre-high coast redwood in Redwood National Park, California. The world’s tallest temperate region trees grow up to 30 metres taller than their tropical counterparts, although no one knows why this is the case.

Heavy logging by the palm oil industry has decimated Yellow Meranti numbers in Malaysia, and the species is now classified as endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources Red List of Threatened Species.

“Logging has been a huge problem in Malaysia – the forests have taken a hammering over the last 40 years,” says Coomes.

However, there is hope for the majestic giants. The Sabah government recently announced that it would act to restore a heavily logged area just to the east of the record-breaking tree, as part of an initiative to preserve the region’s biodiversity.

Research shows that degraded forests can bounce back within 50 to 100 years, Coomes says.

“They can restore themselves without too much effort back into impressive, mature forests,” he says. “You could go back to the same spot in 100 years and you wouldn’t know you were in a secondary forest.”

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