THE ROMANCE OF OUR TREES 



length and breadth of the kingdom. I am not sure 

 that it grows in the hotter parts of southern China, 

 and where I have seen it most abundantly is in the 

 western province of Szechuan (the province of the 

 four streams). There I met with the most perfect 

 specimen of a Ginkgo-tree I have ever seen. It 

 grows a few miles above the city of Kiating, but on 

 the left bank of the Min River, and in 1908 was 

 about 100 ft. tall, had a symmetrical, narrow-oval 

 crown with branches almost sweeping the ground, 

 and a trunk 24 ft. in girth. It is a male. I have 

 seen others in China with rather larger trunks but 

 never one quite so tall or so lovely in form. In the 

 grounds of the Yellow Dragon Temple at Ruling, a 

 summer resort in the Lushan Mountains behind 

 Kiukiang on the Yangtsze River, grows a famous old 

 Ginkgo not especially tall (about 70 ft.) but with a 

 trunk 25 ft. in girth. In and around Shanghai are 

 many fine specimens of this tree. A little to the west 

 of Shanghai in a district unfrequented by foreigners 

 the late Frank N. Meyer, plant explorer in China 

 for the United States Department of Agriculture, 

 found the Ginkgo to be common and used for fuel, 

 and he suggested that it might be truly wild there. 

 Meyer's opinion is more worthy of respect than those of 

 many other travellers who have made similar ascer- 

 tions but I am an unconvinced sceptic. A Russian 



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