446 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 38 



The word Gin in Chinese means "silver" and Kaempfer thought 

 that Ginkgo meant silver apricot. Professor Moule points out 

 that there are no grounds for the termination kgo; the g cannot 

 be explained and may be a slip in transcription, or Ginkgo may 

 be a misprint for Sankyo, a word found by Professor Moule in one 

 of Kaempfer's MSS. in the British Museum Library; it means hill 

 apricot. The list of Japanese names which Kaempfer thought he 

 was reproducing contains no such name as either Ginkyo or Ginkgo. 

 The latter, Professor Moule writes, "is unpronounceable and probably 

 ought never to have existed." But whatever the explanation of 

 "Ginkgo" may be, the Japanese actually call the tree Icho (or Itsio) 

 and the fruit ginnan, and it is clear from Kaempfer's MSS. that he 

 was well aware of this. For a full discussion of all the names readers 

 should consult the authoritative paper on "The name Ginkgo biloba" 

 in T'oung Pao (vol. 33, livr. 3). 



[I am also indebted to Professor Moule for much interesting infor- 

 mation gathered from Chinese and Japanese writings and for notes 

 contributed by his counsin, the Rev. G. H. Moule. A name for 

 the maidenhair tree used by authors in the early Middle Ages is 

 duck's foot: in the twelfth century, a Chinese poet spoke of "the 

 gold of the duck's foot leaves," referring to the autumn color of 

 the foliage. The Japanese believed that Ginkgo served as a protec- 

 tion against fire by exuding water when scorched: the Rev. G. H. 

 Moule writes that he has seen Ginkgo trees blackened by flames and 

 scarcely hurt while other trees were destroyed. The same writer 

 refers to the hanging roots on stems of old Ginkgo trees in Japan 

 which are said to symbolize women's breasts: he speaks of a tree 

 at Sendai 2 which has been worshipped for more than a thousand 

 years by women suffering from lack of milk and any sickness of the 

 breasts.] 



THE PAST HISTORY OF GINKGO 



Let us first examine the nature of the evidence which enables us 

 partially to reconstruct the past history of Ginkgo and other mem- 

 bers of the Ginkgoalean group. Incomplete and fragmentary as 

 it is, there is material enough to provide the outline of a fascinating 

 story. It is fortunate that the leaves of Ginkgo can as a rule be 

 recognized in a fossil state without much difficulty or danger of 

 confusion with the foliage of other plants. Leaves are the chief 

 source of our knowledge: seeds and other remains are rare and' 

 supply little more than confirmatory evidence. Form and vena- 

 tion and, whenever possible, the minute structure of the surface 

 layers of leaves furnish the necessary data. A fossil leaf may agree 

 very closely in shape and venation with leaves of the living plant; 



» For a photograph of the Sendai tree, see A. C. Seward, Plant life through the ages, p. 521, fig. 135 



