The young trees are all from the Dipterocarp family - named after their winged fruit that look like shuttlecocks.

About 70 of the world's 500 or so species were planted by staff of the National Parks Board and Banyan Tree Holdings.

The latter sponsored the $160,000 Dipterocarp Arboretum, which is Singapore's first living gallery of these hardwoods. The money will also fund educational signs and programmes like guided walks for visitors, explaining the heritage of these trees.

Now scrawny and standing at a grown man's height, they could reach 30m high in a century, and still be considered short compared to their majestic cousins in natural rainforests.

The largest known specimen is the termite-resistant Chengal. It stands 80m tall in a forest in Terengganu and is estimated to be about 1,300 years old. It takes about 13 tree-huggers to span its girth.

This species, along with others like the Shorea, Meranti and Kapur, will line the walkways of about three hectares of the 14-hectare park.

An assistant director at Streetscape, Mr S. K. Ganesan, said: "Their special qualities have made them highly sought after for timber and they are disappearing from our forests, which makes it important for us to study, and try to preserve them."

This article was first published in The Straits Times on July 11, 2008.