Natural object: Ginkgo

This is the tip of a knobby spur twig of a gingko branch that had been knocked down in the snow some weeks back in Prospect Park. I brought it home and popped it in some water to see if it would leaf-out. Slowly, but surely, it is. It has an undersea look to it in this photo, which I concocted with my macro lens and 10x loupe.

Ginkgo biloba, you’ll remember, is a rather strange tree: it is the only representative of its family and the only representative of its division, Ginkgophyta, in the kingdom Plantae. The fan-shaped leaves are utterly unique; it reproduces with motile sperm, like ferns and mosses; fossil evidence takes it back 270 million years, but then it disappears from the stony record 2 million years ago.

It’s debated whether the source of all modern ginkgos, in two locations in China, were wild or cultivated by monks a thousand years ago, but either way the species is all cultivated now. It’s a partner with us. And is it tolerant, pretty much up to whatever we can dish out: Sibley notes that four ginkgos about a mile from the center of Hiroshima were some of the few things that survived the 1945 A-bomb attack.