Fallen Ginko Leaves

First ginkgo tree experience: crossing to “The Corner” by Brooks Hall as a 1st year in the autumn of 1980, I invariably got the stinky fruit on the bottom of my tennis shoes. The fruits reek, and that’s why nurseries now only sell male trees. By the time we moved back to Charlottesville in 1999, the landscape designers had removed the smelly trees, but the medical center complex featured at least two dozen ginkos. As a species they are quite prehistoric, hence the unusual leaf shape. In fact, ginkos are unique among plants and are evolutionarily over 200 million years old. There are no living related plant species.

Regina and I, loving that butter yellow color in fall, planted three trees in our yard, but we live west of town in a small hollow that is about 5 degrees cooler. We soon learned that ginkos are cold-intolerant and drop all their leaves within twelve hours of the fall’s first frost. So every year, starting the last week of October, we ask: what will we see this season, beautiful foliage or frost? This autumn we were rewarded with full ginko color, but after Friday night’s frost they all fell today, thousands of leaves by noon, branches now completely bare.