The Garden Magazine November, 1919 



145 



THE earliest known men- 

 tion of the Ginkgo in 

 books is in a Chinese work 

 on agriculture which dates 

 from the 8th century a. d. 

 At the beginning of iooo 

 a. d. the fruit was taken as 

 tribute by the newly estab- 

 lished Sung dynasty, being 

 known as " Yin-hsing" which 

 signifies "Silver Apricot," 

 from its resemblance to the 

 kernel of an Apricot fruit. 

 In the great Chinese Herbal 

 issued in 1 578 a. d. the author 

 calls it the " Ya-chio-tzu." 

 which means " the tree with 

 leaves like a duck's foot " and 

 is quite descriptive. These 

 old names may be in use in 

 parts of China to-day though 

 I have never heard them ; the 

 names in general use in the 

 parts of the Flowery Land I 

 travelled are " Yin-kuo-tzu" 

 (Silver nut tree) and " Pai- 

 kuo-tzu" (White nut tree). 

 In Korea it is known as the 

 "Eun Haing-namou," which 

 is simply the Korean ren- 

 dering of the Chinese name. In Japan the tree is known 

 as the I-cho and the fruit as Gin-nan, which again is a 

 translation of its Chinese name. The tree reached Japan 

 with Buddhism in the 6th century of the Christian era, 

 and "Ginkgo" is simply the Japanese rendering of the 

 Chinese name "Yin-kou." It is, of course, possible that 

 the Ginkgo in those early days did exist as a wild tree in 

 the forests of Japan, but it may be assumed with al- 

 most absolute certainty that in any case it was brought 

 to Japan by Korean and Chinese Buddhist monks and 

 planted by them in the earliest days of their proselyting. 

 Many of the magnificent old Ginkgo trees in Japan are 

 claimed to be more than a thousand years old and there is 

 no valid reason for disputing the age asserted. 



In China the Ginkgo as a planted tree is associated with 

 Chinese civilization almost throughout the length and 

 breadth of the kingdom. I am not sure that it grows in the 

 hotter parts of south China, and where I have seen it most 

 abundantly is in the western province of Szechuan (the 

 province of the four streams). There I saw 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; in 1908 was about 100 feet tall, had a symme- 

 trical, narrow oval crown with branches almost sweeping the 

 ground and a trunk 24 feet 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. 



It is in Japan, and in the city of Tokyo, however, that I 

 have seen the finest average trees and the greatest in size of 

 trunk. Every park, temple ground and palace yard has its 

 Ginkgo tree, usually of great size. There are handsome 



specimens in Hibyaand Shiba 

 parks but the finest I saw 

 grows in Koyenji Temple 

 grounds and is about 85 feet 

 tall and 28 feet in girth of 

 trunk. In the grounds of the 

 Zanpkuji Temple in Azabu, 

 Tokyo there is a grand old 

 tree with a trunk 30 feet in 

 girth but the top has been 

 broken off by a storm. In 

 the Imperial Botanic Gar- 

 dens in Koishikawa, Tokyo, 

 grows the Ginkgo tree on 

 which Professor S. Hirase 

 carried out the experiments 

 which led to his remarkable 

 discovery of the motile male 

 sperms in 1896. 



A T 



AT HOME IN WESTERN CHINA 

 With girth of 24 and height of 100 feet this dwarfs its 

 Buddhist shrine. [The g's take the hard sound in Ginkgo] 



T MATURITY the Gink- 

 go is a stately tree 100 

 feet or more tall with a cylin- 

 dric, slightly tapering, trunk 

 sometimes 30 feet in girth 

 at breast height above the 

 ground. Young free-growing 

 trees commonly have their pri- 

 mary branches radiating in 

 clusters (false whorls) from 

 the stem, tier above tier; and the outline of the tree is distinctly 

 spirelike. Very rarely does this habit obtain in ripe old age. 

 Most usually the crown is made up of several massive, ascend- 

 ing and ascending-spreading branches and innumerable 

 irregularly disposed but more or less horizontally spreading, 

 often semi-pendent branchlets. In such trees the habit is 

 loosely pyramidal to more or less conical oval. Round-headed 

 trees are not uncommon but a flat-headed one I never saw. 

 The branches are rigid and when clothed with leaves decidedly 

 plumose in appearance. The bark on the trunk is pale to 

 dark gray, somewhat corky and fissured into ridges of irregu- 

 lar shape. The wood is white or yellowish white and is not 

 differentiated into heartwood and sapwood; it is fine-grained, 

 something like that of a Maple, is easily worked but is of 

 no great value. In Japan it is used as a groundwork for 

 lacquerware and for making chess-boards and chessmen. 



The leaves, quite unlike those of any other tree or shrub, 

 are unique in their fan-like shape; they are stalked, have no 

 midrib but many forked veins and no cross veinlets, the 

 apex is irregularly crenate or cut, and usually cleft more or 

 less deeply into two or more lobes. In bud the leaves are 

 folded together not rolled up crozier-like as in the Ferns; 

 In size they vary from 2 to 3 inches in width on the spurs, 

 but on the free shoots and especially on those which freely 

 develop from the base of the trunks of old trees, they are 

 sometimes from 6 to 8 inches broad and are often deeply 

 laciniate. In color the leaves are bright, grass-green when 

 young; dull rich green at maturity; and in the autumn 

 assume an unvarying tint of clear yellow before they fall. 

 They are leathery in texture. In China the leaves are 

 sometimes placed in books as a preservative against insects. 



