120 MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN BULLETIN 
of fine specimens of this tree, and visitors are constantly 
commenting upon the singular character of their leaves, 
which are unlike those of any other American or European 
tree, reminding one of the maidenhair fern so much that 
the resemblance has given the ginkgo its common name. 
/ Although the ginkgo was at one time supposed to be a mem- 
ber of the pine family, the structure of the flowers, together 
with other peculiarities, has led to its placement in a sepa- 
rate division (the Ginkgoaceae) of the gymnosperms. It 
is not an evergreen, the leaves turning a beautiful yellow 
in the late fall before falling. 
The maidenhair tree, together with the cycads, instead 
of following the method of fertilization in the higher plants, 
has retained the swimming antherozoids so characteristic of 
the ferns. The ginkgo and cycads thus form a most inter- 
esting bridge across the gulf which formerly was thought 
to separate the fern and fern-like plants from the seed- 
bearing plants. Although the habit and appearance of the 
tree are strongly suggestive of our deciduous flower and 
seed-bearing trees, the fertilizing apparatus is far more sug- 
gestive of the ferns and mosses, a reminder of the time when 
all plants were fitted for an aquatic habitat and provided 
with antherozoids possessing organs of locomotion with 
which to swim through the water to the egg cell. 
“Probably there is no other existing tree to which Darwin’s 
term of “living fossil” may be so truly applied as the 
ginkgo. It is apparently the sole survivor of a race which 
narrowly escaped extinction, the-reason for whieh~we can VW 
only vaguely speculate upon. While fossil remains, found 
in the Palaeozoic, have led some to assume that the maiden- 
hair tree could be traced back to this era, it is not until we 
come to the Mesozoic that the ancestry can be established 
with any degree of certainty. There is abundant evidence, 
however, of the practically world-wide distribution of mem- 
bers of the ginkgos in the oldest of the Mesozoic floras, and 
the remains of the leaves as well as the flowers and 
indicate a surprisingly close resemblance to the existing 
maidenhair tree. It is as though a near relative of the 
Megatherium, or some other prehistoric monster, had man- 
aged in some unknown way to persist to the present date. 
Although at one time growing from Australia, Cape 
Colony, and South America to northern Europe and all 
over North America to Greenland, the ginkgo in the present 
epoch was apparently confined to China and Japan. Even 
here it is not believed to exist wild, in spite of the state- 
ment of Mrs. Bishop, in her “Untrodden Paths of Japan,” 
