The Mighty Ginkgo Tree at My Farm
The mighty ginkgo tree in my Summer House garden is bare once again.
Ginkgo biloba, commonly known as ginkgo or gingko, and also known as the maidenhair tree, is the only living species in the division Ginkgophyta. It is found in fossils dating back about 300-million years. Native to China, the ginkgo tree is widely cultivated, and was cultivated early in human history. I have several ginkgo trees planted around my home, but the majestic ginkgo in my sunken garden is original to the property and about 250-years old. Although not as large as others I've seen, my tree is quite massive. Ginkgo trees have beautiful green leaves that turn a luminous gold-yellow in fall. And on one day, after the hard frost sweeps down the east coast, my mighty ginkgo, along with the others at my farm and countless more in the area, drops its leaves to the ground leaving a gorgeous carpet of color below.
This happened over the weekend. Enjoy these photos.
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- This is the sunken garden behind my Summer House. The main focal point is this great old ginkgo tree at the back of the space. This is how it looked earlier this month – I showed a similar photo of it on my Instagram page @MarthaStewart48. The bright golden yellow leaves tower over many of the trees in this corner…
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- This is how it looks before the leaves turn – it’s filled with beautiful bright green foliage.
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- And then one day over the weekend, it got so cold that the leaves of this gingko tree seemed to drop at once. Look at this soft blanket of leaves on the ground – it’s quite amazing.
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- Here is a closer look. Everyone here at the farm checks on the tree daily during this time of year, and finally the great ginkgo in this garden is bare once again.
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- It’s hard to see the stone footpath beneath all the leaves. Ginkgos are grown as hedges in China to supply the leaves for western herbal medicine. The leaves contain ginkgolides, which are used to improve blood circulation to the brain and to treat many cardiovascular diseases. It is usually Europe’s number one selling herbal medication.
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- Everything is covered in yellow. Here is the area directly below the tree – the trunk of the ginkgo is on the right.
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- Here are the boxwoods lining both sides of the stone footpath in this garden – all covered in ginkgo leaves.
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- And so is the lawn outside the garden. Why does this all happen? In autumn, deciduous trees form a scar between their leaves and stems to protect themselves from diseases and cold. Most flowering trees form scars at different rates, in different parts of the tree, over several weeks. Their leaves then fall off individually. Ginkgo trees form scars across all their stems at once. And when the first hard frost of the season arrives, it finishes severing every leaf, and they fall to the ground in unison.
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- The word ginkgo comes from the Chinese yinxing meaning ‘silver apricot’. It was named the maidenhair tree in England because the leaves look similar to the native maidenhair fern.
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- The trunk of the ginkgo tree is a light brown to brownish-gray bark that is deeply furrowed and highly ridged. The ridges become more pronounced as the tree ages. The trunk circumference of this tree measures more than 14-feet.
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- My great ginkgo tree is a female specimen. Female ginkgo trees produce tan-orange oval fruits that fall to the ground in October and November.
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- Here are many fruits lying among the fallen leaves.
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- The leaves are unusually fan-shaped, up to three-inches long, with a petiole that is also up to three-inches long. This shape and the elongated petiole cause the foliage to flutter in the slightest breeze.
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- Each mature leaf often has a single vertical slit in the top center. This forms the fan with a cavity in the middle separating it into two lobes. Bi-loba means “with two lobes”.
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- Here is a ginkgo tree fruit. The most noticeable thing about these is their smell – it is hard to miss, and the stench is quite disagreeable. The outer, nasty smelling pulp is known botanically as sarcotesta.
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- The ginkgo seeds inside contain urushiol, which is the same chemical that causes poison oak, ivy and sumac, so always wear gloves and protect your skin whenever handling the fruit.
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- Here, the ginkgo fruit is separated from the ginkgo nut – a single hard-shelled seed enclosing an edible kernel. The kernels are often roasted and used in Asian cuisines.
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- Some of the younger trees in the garden hung on to a few leaves, but most of them also dropped over the weekend.
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- This is a photo taken last week of two smaller ginkgo trees at the corners of my herbaceous peony bed – there is one on each corner of the bed…
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- These trees also lost all their leaves over this weekend.
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- The ginkgo is such a fascinating deciduous tree. When did your ginkgo trees lose their leaves? Let me know in the comments section – I am very curious to hear.
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