A symbol of love, peace, hope and longevity, the Maidenhair Tree has withstood the Ice Age and the bombings in Japan in WWII.

Gingko is widely used on college and university campuses as a symbol of wisdom.

Fossils found of leaves related to the modern Ginkgo date back some 270 million years. What we today call Ginkgo biloba include the only two known species of the tree in fossil form, G. adiantoide and G. gardneri. Having survived the Ice Age, its only living descendents were found in a small area of central China. Thus, having no close living relatives, it is uniquely and singly placed in its own family and genus being the only extant species in its group. This fact alone has made the mass plantings of Ginkgos paramount to forestalling its extinction. Surviving Ginkgo trees have been cared for and preserved by Chinese monks for over a thousand years.

The Chinese name for this tree is yínguo (silver fruit) and yinxing (silver apricot or white fruit) and was translated into Japanese as ichō, pronounced as ginkyo. It was later misspelled as ginkgo by the first westerner to see and record this species in 1690 and that is the name we use today although it is often misspelled as gingko.

Maidenhair Trees grow very tall, change colors in Autumn and some of the oldest in China are reported at 164 feet tall. They have separate sexes with the female tree producing the seeds and nuts and being the more attractive of the two growing more round and fuller. However, the male tree is usually the tree of choice because the outer layer of the seeds contain an irritating acid and its’ scent is said to resemble the smell of rancid butter.

It is a very hardy tree and grows in poor soil in the worst conditions. A popular urban tree planted along many streets as shade trees, they withstand harsh conditions and rarely suffer from diesese. Its wood is insect resistant which makes it a long lived specimen. A 3,000 year old tree lives in Shangdon, China and the remains of these trees still live in Japan after the WWII bombings . When the lands were descimated these trees still stood, scarred but alive. It was doubtful that anything would grow here again but Ginkgo resprouted the following spring and the bark has since been thought of as fire proof making the tree known as a symbol of longevity, peace, and hope.