MORE ABOUT THE GINKGO
Anyone questioning the Ginkgo tree’s suitability for establishment at Court House Square is highly encouraged to browse botanist Peter Crane’s book Ginkgo, published in 2013. Formerly the director of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University and director of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, England, Crane is currently president of the Oak Spring Garden Foundation in northern Virginia. Below are sample excerpts from the book; click the button below for more information.
Ginkgo is one of the world’s most distinctive plants and has one of the longest botanical pedigrees; there is no other living tree with a prehistory so deeply intertwined with that of our planet.
Many of our familiar trees – ash, hornbeam magnolia, oak, or walnut – have prehistories measured in millions or even tens of millions of years. Ginkgo has been present for 200 million years or more.
In the past fifty years ginkgo has been resurgent; interest in growing ginkgo, what it stands for scientifically, and the ways in which it might be useful has never been higher. Ginkgo has become recognized as a valuable street tree that grows well in tough places. Resistant to disease, tolerant of pollution, and able to withstand extremes of heat and cold, it is now familiar in urban landscapes over much of the world. Parts of Seoul are a near ginkgo forest, and ginkgo is among the most common street trees in Manhattan. You can see ginkgo in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, in Monet’s garden in Giverny, and in parks and garden in all but the warmest and coldest places on our planet. In recent decades ginkgo has also found its way into the pharmacy. It is among the most popular of herbal remedies, and its medicinal properties are the subject of advanced biomedical research. Extracts from ginkgo leaves are the source of a multibillion dollar pharmaceutical industry.
The same attributes that have allowed ginkgo to survive for thousands of millennia may have also contributed to its success as a hardy and resilient street tree. The lives of street trees are “nasty, brutish and short”: on average, they survive a mere seven to thirteen years, compared with the sixty years the same species might expect to enjoy in a park and the hundreds of years it might live in its native forest. Debora Gangloff, executive director of San Francisco’s nonprofit group American Forests, explained some of the reasons why: “They’re stuck in a concrete box, get bikes chained to them, with dogs relieving themselves and cars hitting them… It’s a hard life.” From the salt that attacks their roots in winter to the ozone that assaults their leaves in summer, the constant barrage of chemicals faced by street trees is well beyond the level of abuse that evolution designed them to endure.
Ginkgo is one of the world’s most distinctive plants and has one of the longest botanical pedigrees; there is no other living tree with a prehistory so deeply intertwined with that of our planet. The modern-day mantra of more, better, faster is all very well; but followed unthinkingly it is a recipe for disaster. Trees, especially trees like ginkgo, which connect us to the deep history of our planet, ask us to reflect more often and think more carefully about all we lose when the short view rules our world and everything in it.
Citation: Crane, Peter. Ginkgo. New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2013.
Many of our familiar trees – ash, hornbeam magnolia, oak, or walnut – have prehistories measured in millions or even tens of millions of years. Ginkgo has been present for 200 million years or more.
In the past fifty years ginkgo has been resurgent; interest in growing ginkgo, what it stands for scientifically, and the ways in which it might be useful has never been higher. Ginkgo has become recognized as a valuable street tree that grows well in tough places. Resistant to disease, tolerant of pollution, and able to withstand extremes of heat and cold, it is now familiar in urban landscapes over much of the world. Parts of Seoul are a near ginkgo forest, and ginkgo is among the most common street trees in Manhattan. You can see ginkgo in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, in Monet’s garden in Giverny, and in parks and garden in all but the warmest and coldest places on our planet. In recent decades ginkgo has also found its way into the pharmacy. It is among the most popular of herbal remedies, and its medicinal properties are the subject of advanced biomedical research. Extracts from ginkgo leaves are the source of a multibillion dollar pharmaceutical industry.
The same attributes that have allowed ginkgo to survive for thousands of millennia may have also contributed to its success as a hardy and resilient street tree. The lives of street trees are “nasty, brutish and short”: on average, they survive a mere seven to thirteen years, compared with the sixty years the same species might expect to enjoy in a park and the hundreds of years it might live in its native forest. Debora Gangloff, executive director of San Francisco’s nonprofit group American Forests, explained some of the reasons why: “They’re stuck in a concrete box, get bikes chained to them, with dogs relieving themselves and cars hitting them… It’s a hard life.” From the salt that attacks their roots in winter to the ozone that assaults their leaves in summer, the constant barrage of chemicals faced by street trees is well beyond the level of abuse that evolution designed them to endure.
Ginkgo is one of the world’s most distinctive plants and has one of the longest botanical pedigrees; there is no other living tree with a prehistory so deeply intertwined with that of our planet. The modern-day mantra of more, better, faster is all very well; but followed unthinkingly it is a recipe for disaster. Trees, especially trees like ginkgo, which connect us to the deep history of our planet, ask us to reflect more often and think more carefully about all we lose when the short view rules our world and everything in it.
Citation: Crane, Peter. Ginkgo. New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2013.
