It is a most stately tree, much seen in the streets of many European towns and cities. It has one decided draw back. Just at this time of year, the fruit falls and, according to a gardening writer in a German news paper, while the cherry like aspect leads you to think of delicious melt in mouth freshness, it's a foul deception. The lovely object gives off a smell which the writer likens, indelicately, to the smell of old sweat emanating from feet not washed for ages. An infernal stink, in fact.
And, he says, that in Monchengladbach (over against the Dutch border), people hurry through one of its streets which is particularly well endowed with the tree, to escape the revolting fug. But our intrepid gardening writer had learned that inside the smelly out side there is a kernel or nut which, when roasted is held in East Asia, the home of the tree, to be a real delicacy.
Well, death and the devil, writes our man, he had actually put this to the proof the year before. He had washed off the gooey flesh under running water until only his hands stank. He then roasted the nuts that remained in a pan well sprinkled with salt. The result? The nuts sprang open and he tasted the kernal. Verdict on the resulting kernel? A bit like roast chestnut, a bit mealy and insipid.
All this comes new to a man who has just, for the second time in his life, planted a ginkgo. The first didn't thrive and was dug out by a new owner of the land. The second, bought on an inspiration after viewing some splendid specimens in Geneva, is thriving after less than a year. But we won't see the fruit or have to endure the stink. It is not likely to fruit at all.
Jack Whaley in The Gardens of Ireland, writes that the biggest he came across in Ireland was one of three in the grounds of Ashbourne House Hotel, Glounthane, County Cork. It stood, a few years ago, at 59 feet and was one of the biggest in the country. The ginkgo biloha, also known as the Maidenhair Tree, has a fan shaped, two lobed soft leaf with parallel veins like the ribs of a fan, writes Herbert L Edlin, and Hugh Johnson in his International Book of Trees writes that it has not changed its design in 150,000,000 years. He calls its unmistakable leaf "as startling as Man Friday's footprint."
Originally worldwide, it came back to Europe in the Eighteenth Century from the Far Fast. In autumn its leaves are bright gold.