A living fossil and botanical curiosity has appeared in sight of my front gate- a newly planted Ginkgo biloba sometimes called the Maidenhair Tree. Last week a number of planting holes were created in pavements around the neighbourhood and this week various trees have been added. This initiative was funded by donations gathered during the Telegraph Hill Open Gardens weekend which took place in May; numerous gardens opened to the public including the one I muse upon in this diary.
 G. biloba is reckoned to be at least 270 million years old and is much the same now as it was then which makes it one of the most ancient of trees still living. All other plants in the world are members of groupings of related plants but Ginkgo has a unique taxonomy being the only member of its division, class, genus, order and family of which it is the one and only species. In prehistory there were other Ginkgos but they are gone. The Maidenhair Tree was here with the dinosaurs (and probably eaten by them).
 It is thought that small populations still exist in its native China that are wild and semi-wild but the Ginkgo has a venerable history of cultivation in both the East and West going back a thousand years or more.         

 One of the notable characteristics that endears Ginkgo to horticulturists is the luminosity of its leaves when they turn golden yellow in autumn. Walking in Greenwich Park a few weeks there were numerous trees blazing out the last days of autumn (see my entry dated 19th. November). This Ginkgo glowed with a greater intensity than any of them. 

 I returned today to have another look. The distinctive fan shaped leaves have largely fallen and fruits are dangling from the branches (just about visible in the photograph above). Doing some research for this entry I came across a newspaper article from 2013 saying the Greenwich Ginkgo had produced ripened fruits for the first time in its existence after a long, hot summer that year. Given that we have had the longest, hottest summer for decades I imagine this might be true of 2018 as well.
 It is said that the seed in the fruit can be considered edible; conversely the pulp of the fallen fruit is noted for smelling foul (that's certainly true). There's an intriguing theory that this smell might have served to attract dinosaurs to eat the fruit and thereby disperse the seeds. Dinosaurs are extinct but Ginkgo biloba is still here and said to be a very resilient choice as an urban street tree- after 270 million years it clearly has some staying power.