This tree has been around a little while in the Snyder Park Gardens and Arboretum. In fact, it's one of my favorite trees. It's such a popular tree in this garden that we even decided to move the location of a sidewalk while developing our master landscape design in order to preserve this tree. However, now that it has revealed its identity, I am not sure what we will do.
Yes, this particular tree is a ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba) and it's a girl. We had no idea. For at least the last three years while we have been hanging out at this site, creating a landscape design for the future Snyder Park Gardens and Arboretum, we assumed it was a male because there were no fruits. Never did I stop and think for a minute that it might be an immature tree that was not quite ready to fruit! UGH. I verified in Michael Dirr's "Manual of Woody Landscape Plants" that "it may take 20 years or more before a seedling Ginkgo flowers." Oh well, we can either leave the tree and laugh in the fall when the fruits smell up the place and talk about this learning opportunity or we can take the only gingko tree in the gardens down and start over! What say you????? Get close enough to your screen and you may smell the fruits in the photo above!
I do love ginkgo trees and their incredible burst of yellow fall color and the shape of their leaves and the fact that they are relatively pest-free. However, we all know that you want to plant male gingkos and who knew at the time this one was planted that it was a female!