THE ROMANCE OF OUR TREES 



We of the West owe our first knowledge of the 

 Ginkgo-tree to Engelbert Kaempfer, who, as a sur- 

 geon in the service of the old Dutch East-India Com- 

 pany, visited Japan in September, 1692, and during 

 the time made an overland journey from Nagasaki 

 to Tokyo. He returned to Europe in 1694, and 

 published a book in 17 12 in which he gives a good 

 figure of the Ginkgo. An Englishman named Gor- 

 don, in 1 77 1, sent a plant of it to the great Linnaeus 

 who adopted Kaempfer's name for the generic title of 

 the tree, calling it Ginkgo biloba. In 1796, an English 

 botanist, one Smith, renamed it Salisburia adianti- 

 folia on the grounds that Linnaeus's name was 

 "equally uncouth and barbarous." This act of 

 pedantry was very properly objected to at the time 

 and later Smith's name was abandoned for the older 

 and legitimate one given by Linnaeus. 



The Ginkgo-tree was first introduced into Europe 

 by the Dutch sometime between 1727 and 1737, and 

 planted in the Botanic Garden at Utrecht, but the 

 date is uncertain. It came to England between 1752 

 and 1754, presumably by seeds brought direct from 

 Japan. The first tree to flower in Europe was in 

 Kew Gardens in 1795 and proved to be male. The 

 famous Jacquin planted a tree in Vienna about 1768, 

 and this tree when it flowered, proved to be a male 

 also. Of its first introduction to France the following 

 54 



