Hawthorn Street opposite Page Street: Ginkgo biloba, Maidenhair Tree

Ginkgo biloba

The Ginkgo tree dating to the days of the dinosaurs is a survivor of geologic time and historic time. Trees can live for over a thousand years. A Ginkgo tree re-sprouted from the charred radioactive remains of the atomic bomb blast at Hiroshima. The surviving Ginkgo tree is alive in a temple named Hosenji located about 1 km away from the blast center. The tree is resistant to pollution, pathogens, and insect damage making it an ideal choice for urban locations. It is used as a park tree, where it can grow to its full height and width over hundreds of years.

Ginkgo is regarded as a “living fossil” because of the species’ uninterrupted existence for 270 million years without changes and for being the oldest tree in the world, with no living relative in existence. Its relationship with other plants is uncertain. As a result, it is classified in its own division: Ginkgophyta, having the extant species G. biloba. For this reason, the ginkgo is considered the “missing link” between gymnosperms and angiosperms.

Vigorous growing young Ginkgo trees display pyramidal growth with a principal central leader and spaced spirals of lateral branches growing out in a diagonal orientation to the trunk. As they mature, the vigorous increase in height slows, accompanied by the formation of a spreading crown due to the filling out of the branched, younger tree form. This dioecious tree bears clusters of fan-shaped, deciduous, alternate, and simple leathery leaves (2-5 cm long) with forking parallel venation. The leaves turn bright yellow and then drop with the first freeze in autumn. The edible seeds are coated with a fleshy, malodorous, poisonous covering on the female tree. It is thought that the smell, likened to rotting flesh, was an incentive for dinosaurs to consume the fruits and distribute the seeds.

The ginkgo has tremendous medicinal, spiritual, and horticultural importance in Chinese culture. The supplements are bestselling herbal medications with a long history of use in traditional medicine to treat blood disorders; these are known to improve memory and offer the best-known way to keep the mind sharp. The Gingko was venerated and protected within Chinese, Korean, and Japanese temples for centuries. 1.

In the United States, merchants, explorers, and collectors imported botanical specimens to arboretums and private estates in America in the 18th and 19th centuries. During it zenith, New Bedford was green with exotic plantings brought back in the holds of merchant ships and whaling vessels. Many fine estates, like the Plummer homestead, boasted specimens from every corner of the globe, including the oriental Ginkgo tree.

http://arnoldia.arboretum.harvard.edu/pdf/articles/1981-41-4-the-ginkgo-in-america.pdf

1. Tasiu Isah, Rethinking Gingko biloba L.:Medicinal uses and conservation, Pharmacogn Rev. 2015 Jul-Dec; 9(18): 140–148.