Ginkgo biloba Seeds | Ginkgo
LATIN NAME: Ginkgo biloba
COMMON NAME: Ginkgo
Plant Profile
Ginkgo biloba is a deciduous tree of slow, stately habit that can live for centuries and reach towering height in maturity. The leaf is unmistakable: a flat, fan-shaped blade with a central notch dividing it into two lobes, carried on a long stalk and turning a clear butter-gold before it falls all at once. The tree is dioecious, with male catkin-like cones and female plants bearing paired ovules that ripen into the fleshy, foul-smelling seed.
Ginkgophytes once spanned the Northern Hemisphere; today Ginkgo is the sole genus left, which is why it sits in its own division and its own family. Fossil leaves from the Jurassic are nearly identical to those on a street tree today, a rare case of a lineage that simply held its form across deep time.
Only female trees bear the seed, and only after a long juvenile period, which is why city plantings increasingly specify male cultivars to avoid the butyric-acid reek of the fallen fruit. The seed’s outer coat smells of rancid butter, though the inner kernel is a traditional food once the toxic outer layers are processed away.
The autumn colour change is so synchronized that a mature tree can drop its entire golden canopy within a short window, a spectacle that draws visitors to old temple groves. The leaf is the ornamental and the crop at once, gathered from both avenue trees and dedicated plantations after it falls.
For a theme planting of survivor species, ginkgo sits naturally beside the cancer tree, whose bark yields camptothecin, and the hardy rubber tree, a rubber-bearing medicinal tree, both studied for their compounds as ginkgo is for its leaf. Together they tell the story of ancient lineages that modern medicine still mines.
Science & Biotechnology
The biomedical interest in ginkgo is real and well documented: the leaf contains flavonoid glycosides and a unique pair of terpene lactones, the ginkgolides and bilobalide, compounds scarcely found elsewhere in the plant kingdom. Standardized leaf extracts are among the most studied botanical preparations, with research lines tracking cognitive and circulatory effects. The note for the grower is that this is a leaf-crop chemistry, not a garden folklore.
The ginkgolides are cage-like terpenes whose structure fascinated chemists for decades, and their near-exclusive presence in this one genus is a genuine biochemical curiosity. Extraction and standardization of the leaf for the supplement trade is a sizable horticultural and engineering enterprise in parts of China, with plantations managed like any other leaf crop.
Plantations grown for leaf rather than ornament select for high flavonoid and terpene-lactone content and for a manageable tree form, a different aim from the avenue tree. Clonal propagation holds the chemistry stable across a planting, much as tissue culture cleans and multiplies elite lines for consistent, repeatable leaf quality.
Uses & Benefits
In the landscape it is prized as a tolerant, pest-resistant urban tree that shrugs off smog and compacted soil, and it is planted around temples across East Asia as a living monument. The leaf is harvested for tea and extract, and the toasted seed is eaten in small amounts in traditional cuisine. As a specimen it pairs in the ancient-tree theme with the dawn redwood, another relic gymnosperm.
Growing from Seed
The seed is large and bony, and it benefits from cleaning and a moist cold period before it is set out, after which the radicle emerges and the long taproot begins. Grow the seedling in a deep container so the root does not curl, and move it to a permanent spot while still young. Ginkgo tolerates a range of soils but rewards deep, well-drained ground and full sun.
Remove the smelly outer coat and keep the seed in cool, moist conditions so the embryo is ready to move once the soil warms. A curled taproot is the main failure of container-grown stock, so use a deep pot from the start and handle the root with care at the time of the move.
Move the young tree to its site when it stands a manageable height with a straight, uncurled taproot, not on any fixed schedule. Plant deep enough to support the future trunk, water through the first dry seasons, and prune only to shape a single leader. Few pests trouble it, though the female fruit is a nuisance best avoided by choosing a male clone.
Our Take
Plant ginkgo once and it may outlast you, so pick a male clone for the garden and enjoy a gold that drops in a single storm; for a planting of ancient survivor trees grow it with Metasequoia Seed Dawn Redwood, Camptotheca acuminata seeds Cancer Tree seed, and Eucommia ulmoides TREE SEEDS.
Related Reading
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