Ginkgo biloba
Ginkgo was described by Engelbert Kaempfer in 1712 after which became a popular introduction in European parks. In some European cities it is planted as a street tree as it requires little maintenance.
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Ginkgo biloba is the only surviving species of a large group of gymnosperms that had its heyday in the Jurassic and Cretaceous, but originated even earlier in the Permian, from which 280 million-year-old fossils of the group have been found. Charles Darwin called the tree a living fossil. Stands of Ginkgo recently found in Zhejiang and Guizhou provinces in central China are believed to represent relictual wild populations. Ginkgo was once common throughout Europe and North America, but was died out before or during the last ice age. The tree has long been cultivated as a sacred tree in China and Japan.
Ginkgo grows up to 40 m high, it is deciduous and has a conical shape while it is young. The tree has gray, furrowed bark. The shoots are of two kinds: long shoots with spirally arranged leaves and short shoots that bear flowers and leaves in groups of 4-5. The leaves have a fan shape, are 5-12 cm wide, tough and two-lobed. The leaf nerves are forked. The leaves change to a buttery yellow autumn colour before falling in October. Ginkgos have separate male and female trees. Flowering occurs at the same time as or just after leaves open, but only when the trees are 30-40 years old. The male flowers are in thick, yellow, drooping catkins that grow up to 8 cm long, while the female flowers are round and sit individually on long stems. From the female flowers develop plum-like, approx. 3 cm long fruits that smell unpleasant when ripe. The odour is due to the formation of butyric acid when the pulp around the seeds rots, producing a smell reminiscent of vomit or rancid butter. The seed is like that of a stone fruit and is 2-3 cm long, oval and consists of a hard inner layer that is surrounded by a fleshy, greenish-yellow outer layer. The core is soft, sweet and edible. After ripening, the fleshy outer part of the seed changes colour to brown.
In China and Japan, the nutritious seeds are roasted and used for food. The seeds are the part of the plant that is most used in traditional Chinese medicine, while it is the leaves that are most sought after in the West.
In China, the oldest ginkgo is estimated to be approx. 3500 years old. It was introduced early and cultivated in Japan, where today there are specimens that are around a thousand years old. In the western world, the tree became known through the German physician and traveler K盲mpfer. He was part of a Dutch delegation to Japan in 1690 and found the tree species on the island of Nippon. K盲mpfer published his description of the tree in 1712 and named it Ginkgo, and it took only 15 years before the first plants were introduced to Utrecht in the Netherlands. Ginkgo was introduced to England in 1754, to Austria in 1768 and to France in 1780. One of the first trees planted in Europe is found in Leiden in the Netherlands. They are now grown in gardens, parks and as street trees in temperate and subtropical regions around the world, and are found in almost every major city in the United States. They are wind resistant and can withstand polluted city air better than many other trees. Ginkgos can also grow outdoors in Norway, but do best in the milder parts of the country.
In the Nordic countries, the tree first reached Sweden in 1771 in the form of a gift to Linnaeus, but unfortunately this plant died quite quickly. In Norway, the first ginkgo was planted in a botanical garden in Christiania in 1839 by an east-facing wall. In the glasshouse at the Botanical Garden on T酶yen, there is a female tree that is likely the largest specimen of the species in this country. It has several trunks and in around 1980 it was 13 m high and had a circumference at the ground of 280 cm. In this country, the trees rarely grow taller than 20 meters. Ginkgo is not hardy inland and should only be planted in coastal areas with high summer temperatures (zones 3-4). It is tolerant of a range of soil conditions, but prefers well-drained, loamy soil that never dries out completely. It is quite rarely planted, but is today offered by well-stocked garden centers and nurseries.
Ginkgos are propagated by seeds, by branches or cuttings. The seed must be cold-treated (stratified) to germinate. Young plants are not very hardy and must be protected from the cold. They need cover in the winter for several years. Only when the plants have become 1.5-2 m tall can they survive without further care.
Our plant comes from seeds that our employees collected in Japan in 2006.
