CHAPTER VIII 



THE MAIDEN HAIR TREE 



' ...the trees 

 That whisper round a temple become soon 

 Dear as the temple's self.' Keats. 



The Maiden Hair tree of China and Japan, which 

 Avas introduced into Europe early in the eighteenth 

 century, has now become fairly well known. Though 

 hardy in England, it requires warmer summers for 

 full development and regular flowering. To botan- 

 ists this Eastern tree is of peculiar interest, partly 

 because of the isolated position it occupies in the 

 plant-kingdom and partly by reason of its great 

 antiquity. There is probably no other existing tree 

 which has so strong a claim to be styled a 'living 

 fossil,' to use a term applied by Darwin to survivals 

 from the past. In 1/12 the traveller Kaempfer 

 proposed for this plant the generic name Ginkgo, 

 and Linnaeus adopted this designation, adding the 

 specific name biloha to denote the bisection of 

 the wedge-shaped lamina of the leaf into two 



