At 03:54 PM 12/4/2000, Una Smith wrote:
>Ginkgo biloba is in no danger of extinction; the fruits are an
>important COMMERCIAL nut WIDELY used in Chinese cooking, the leaves
>are used WORLDWIDE in MANY POPULAR MEDICINES, and BOTH sexes are
>common as street trees.
*** Not really intending to get into the middle of this but... Technically,
they are NOT fruit as it is not a flowering plant.
>kwantenzap at xs4all.nl (CorK) writes:
>> >Where did you observe street trees?
>>Female specimens of Ginkgo biloba with which I am well acquainted,
>having stepped on their smelly rotting fruits:
>>New Haven, CT: Sachem Street; also along Chapel Street (downtown)
>Cambridge, MA: Harvard, outside the Museum of Comparative Zoology
>Manhattan, NY: Upper West Side, along Broadway
>>In New Haven, there is also a solitary specimen in Wooster Park. I
>don't know its sex: it has produced no fruits that I have seen, but
>that doesn't mean it is male. Apart from this specimen, all Ginkgo
>trees I know of are planted in mixed-sex or all-female populations.
*** 'fruit' smell rotten even before they become so. I suppose that may be
for seed dispersal (attracting an animal, etc.). But, your stepping on
them points out the reason that males are planted more than female, to
avoid that situation. So, males do dominate but females are
planted. Gingkos are all over (horticulturally) Cape Girardeau, MO where I
live, with both sexes present in street, landscape populations, etc.,
though males do far outnumber female. This has been my experience when I
have seen them in D.C., L.A., N.Y. (Manhattan), Philly and other cities
around the country. I don't know if the seeds are viable and if so, would
that indicate they had been fertilized. That is, I don't know if any of
these can be considered 'breeding' populations. I have never noticed a
seedling or sapling around suggesting that they may not actually breed even
in these mixed sex plantings, etc.
I didn't know that any actually existed in the 'wild' in China, the story a
I always here is that they have been cultivated for thousands of years in
temples, shrines, etc. and were considered 'extinct' in the wild, but doing
very well 'in captivity'.
Dave Starrett
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