Range & habitat
Swamp kapur is native to northern and northwestern Borneo and belongs to Dipterocarpaceae. Its range is restricted to this island, unlike the Borneo camphor tree, which also occurs elsewhere in western Malesia. Brunei’s forest inventory associates it with peat-swamp forest. The accepted name Dryobalanops rappa identifies a particular wet-forest tree, not every timber sold as kapur.
Sources & references · 2
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew · Dryobalanops rappa: taxonomy and distributionFAO · Brunei Darussalam: forest resources and peat-swamp forest typesWhat research tells us
A 2025 study identified fossil leaves of this living species in Brunei. The fossils provide evidence of a much longer history of this tree in northern Borneo’s coastal rainforests. They make an unusually direct connection between today’s threatened forest flora and the island’s geological past. Modern habitat protection still concerns living forest, water conditions and regeneration, not the fossil sites alone.
