Menara was first identified in August 2018, when researchers working with the Southeast Asia Rainforest Research Partnership scanned the canopy of Danum Valley using terrestrial laser scanners and aerial drones. The technology produced a three-dimensional model of the forest that revealed a single tree projecting far above the rest - a yellow meranti, Richetia faguetiana, a species of dipterocarp known for its height but never previously measured at anything close to this scale. The 3D model suggested a height approaching 100 meters. Confirmation required something more direct. Unding Jami and his team were dispatched to climb the tree and measure it by hand, a process that took the better part of a day and involved ascending through a crown 40 meters wide.

The numbers are striking. From the average ground level at its base, Menara measures 97.58 meters. From the lowest point on its trunk, where the ground slopes away, the measurement reaches 100.8 meters. Ninety-five percent of the tree's 81,500-kilogram mass is concentrated in the trunk; only five percent is in the crown. The stem is extraordinarily straight - its center of mass sits at 28 meters above the ground and deviates just 0.6 meters from the central vertical axis. This near-perfect symmetry explains how the tree has survived on a sloping site: it is, structurally, one of the most balanced living things on the planet. Among flowering plants, only one individual stands taller - the Centurion, a Eucalyptus regnans in Tasmania, at 100.5 meters.

Menara's height is not just a record. It is evidence of what Borneo's dipterocarp forests can produce when left undisturbed. Danum Valley was never logged. No human settlement existed within its boundaries before it was designated a conservation area. The tree grew for centuries in conditions that no longer exist across most of Borneo: continuous canopy, intact root networks, undisturbed soil. The greatest diversity of Dipterocarpus species anywhere on Earth occurs on Borneo, and Danum Valley alone harbors over 15,000 plant species. Menara is the apex specimen of a forest type that deforestation has reduced to fragments elsewhere on the island. It was the tallest known tree on the Asian continent until 2023, when a South Tibetan cypress in the Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon was found to be taller.

In 2020, Pos Malaysia released a stamp set featuring Menara. The set included a miniature sheet 18 centimeters long - the largest stamp the Malaysian postal service had ever issued, an appropriate tribute to an oversized subject. The stamp brought Menara to a national audience, most of whom will never make the two-hour drive from Lahad Datu on logging roads to reach Danum Valley. But the tree stands regardless of its audience. It has been growing since before the Chartered Company, before the Japanese occupation, before Malaysia existed. It will likely outlast the stamp that commemorates it, provided the forest that sustains it remains intact.