Ginkgo trees, male or female ? My story.

(originally posted in NTUMC68 class website)

Ginkgo trees, male or female? My story.

Ginkgo Biloba is a “living fossil” dating back more than 200 millions of years ago. There are male trees and female trees. The female trees bear fruit-like seeds after being pollinated by the pollen cones from the male trees. The ginkgo’s fruit has a very unpleasant odor, which smells like feces when you came across them, especially when you step on and crush them. But can you tell which ginkgo tree is male or female before there was production of fruits.

Some expert said “the male tree has a slim column and is slightly longer, and the female tree has a wider crown and a more spread out form”, which somewhat mimic most of the animal counterparts including humans. During our 35th year class reunion in the year of 2003, I had the opportunity to view the ginkgo “grove” in the Si-Tou National Park. As it was in the late autumn, we saw the leaves had started to fall and we heard the hoarse whisper at breeze the same time.
I picked up a few leaves just for fun and perhaps for future reference. I showed them to our classmate, Cho Son-Nan. He pointed out to me that the leave with a “slit” or deep notch on the top center was a female and the one with a smooth edge was a male.

With much curiosity, I started to do a little research upon our return to the States. According to most of the writings on ginkgo, there had not been any mention of the fact that the shape difference of leaves would indicate a male or female tree. Today, while taking a walk in our hospital campus ground during my call duty in this lovely autumn afternoon, I passed by quite a few ginkgo trees and smelled the foul odor of their fruits. I carefully re-examined their leaves. I noticed the leaves from the trees bearing the fruits have a “slit” or deep notch on the top center, and the leaves from the trees without bearing fruits have a relatively smooth edge. These findings are consistent with what our classmate, professor Cho Son-Nan, had indicated to me years ago. Cho Son Nan is right on this respect about ginkgo, or at least he is right when I refer to the ones on our campus.

Yeh Tze