Ginkgo Trees

Ginkgo trees on Riverside Drive

If there is one plant (sic) particularly associated with our stay in New York, it's the Ginkgo tree. Not only had we never really taken notice of Ginkgo trees before coming to New York this fall. But by now we also have stories to tell about this family of flamboyant trees.

It all starts with our favourite New Yorkers Virginia and Fred. For a couple of months they have now been cohabiting with a new room mate: a Ginkgo tree that they found some day on the street. The tree had been cut somewhere at its trunk and still bore its beautiful fan-shaped leaves. In a spirit of wonder and curiosity, they took home the tree which has ever since stood in their apartment as some sort of unusual contemporary sculpture. Its leaves have since turned from saffron yellow to brown and folded in, but (as dropping leaves - Virginia and Fred gathered - is apparently an active process), they continue to hang on the tree.  

In the shape of a sculpture at Virginia's and Fred's, we have thus come to know Ginkgo trees (well, a Ginkgo tree in particular to be precise). Yet since then we have noticed that New York is virtually full of these plants. Stately Riverside Drive is flanked by dozens of Ginkgo trees, whose warm and bright yellow leaves bring beautiful colour spots into the greyish brown urban tissue of New York City's Upper West Side. And wherever else we go, Ginkgo trees turn out not to be far.

Ironically, we have gotten accustomed today to another particularity of Ginkgo trees. Female Ginkgoes not only bear fruit, but can also be distinguished by their distinctive, pungent and hardly pleasant smell. Since we inattentively walked across the Ginkgo fruits that heavy wind had torn off this morning, Ginkgoes have accompanied us not only visually, but also olfactorily through our day.

Be this as it may, Ginkgo trees have become an unmistakable feature of this city (from our perspective at the very least).