Vellum? Onion? Succulent? Fabric? Leather?
My Texture Identifier™ whirred inconclusively for a few minutes before figuratively shrugging. It couldn’t quite peg what this leaf felt like: Different, anyway. Not, in fact, like a leaf at all, especially in the fall when I expect leaves to be stiff, crinkled, and dry, and to crackle when stepped upon.
But as odd as it was, the texture was not the first surprise. I’d noticed the tree on my way into the nearby Big but Not-Beautiful Box Store because of its strong-yellow leaves: not a big surprise at this season but notable nonetheless . . .
. . . but what really caught my eye was their fan shape.
From somewhere in the recesses of my brain my Tree Identifier™ said, “Ginkgo?”
An hour later, my question became a statement as Google served up leaf images unmistakably the same as the four leaves I had grabbed off the ground at random. I had even inadvertently collected physical evidence of the variable bifurcation of the leaves noted by several sites. Variable bifurcation sounds all botanico-technical but it just means that some leaves are notched, some are not, and in the former the depth of the notch varies.
Bifurcation (L to R): None, some, more, and quite a bit.
If you haven’t seen a ginkgo tree near your local Big but Not-Beautiful Box Store, you might be thinking they’re some newfangled, johnny-come-lately tree. Quite the opposite.
Ginkgo biloba is the last remaining relative of the Ginkgoales, a group of ancient plants inhabiting earth during the Permian, almost 300 million years ago.
– Bamboo Plants
For a long time they were known only from the fossil record. As a living species, they became known to European botanists in 1691 when Engelbert Kaempfer saw them in Japan, where Buddhist monks cultivated them in their gardens. In North America, you can see fossilized trees from 15 million years ago in Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park (Washington state) and a still-living tree brought from Japan in 1785 (Bartram’s Garden, Philadelphia). That sounds pretty old to someone who grew up with poplars (typical lifespan of 30 to 50 years for the local species) as the default tree, but ginkgos can live up to 3,000 years.
If you happen to be within the ginkgo’s hardiness range and would like to plant one, choose a male tree.
The ripened fleshy seed covering has a very disagreeable odor, similar to that of rancid butter, and can be a slipping hazard on paved surfaces, making the female tree less popular for garden planting. – Britannica
“Less popular”. Ah, the understated-ness of the British: it never fails to impress. Just like the amazing stuff you can find in an otherwise nondescript parking lot.
