THE STORY OF THE MAIDENHAIR TREE 



By Sir Albert C. Seward, Sc. D., F. R. S. 



INTRODUCTORY 



In March 1936 several letters were published in The Times drawing 

 attention to the remarkable history of the maidenhair tree (Ginkgo 

 biloba L.) and its unique position as a link between the present 

 age and an almost incredibly remote past. The interest awakened 

 by the correspondence suggested to me the possibility that a fuller 

 account of the history, both of the maidenhair tree itself and the 

 family or group of which it is the sole survivor, might be acceptable 

 to readers of Science Progress. Ginkgo was selected as one of sev- 

 eral examples of living plants of ancient lineage in a book first pub- 

 lished in 1911 entitled "Links with the Past in the Plant World" 

 and further reference was made to it in an article contributed to 

 this journal in October 1935 on "Selections from the Study of Plant 

 Migrations Revealed by Fossils." More recently, in an article 

 published in Nature (May 1, 1937) attention was called to some 

 important contributions to the geological history of the Ginkgo 

 family by Dr. Florin of Stockholm and Professor Harris of Reading. 

 My present aim is to give a fuller account of the story of Ginkgo 

 and its allies, a story founded on data collected from plant-bearing 

 rocks of many ages and from widely scattered regions. Evidence 

 furnished by fossils enables us to state with confidence that the 

 Ginkgo group of trees — the Ginkgoales — was once almost world- 

 wide in its distribution and comprised many genera and species: 

 a few million years ago this section of the plant kingdom fell from 

 its high estate and is now represented by a single species. An 

 attempt is made in the following pages, omitting unnecessary detail 

 and technicalities, to present some of the evidence. The first part 

 of this article is devoted to Ginkgo biloba, and closely related trees 

 of the same genus which failed to persist until the present age. In 

 the second part a short account is given of other genera included in 

 the Ginkgo group that have long been extinct. 



' Reprinted by permission from Science Progress, vol. 32, No. 127, January 1938. 



441 



