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Or just trim it before the seeds form: duh. A lot cheaper than ripping it up & replacing it.
It could be trimmed of flowers while it's young, and they do grow slowly, but eventually it will get too big to do that....and they do get really large!
Location: somewhere close to Tampa, but closer to the beach
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Yes!! the fruit produced by Female trees smells terrible..which is why your best bet when considering Ginkgo trees are to look for Male varieties which do not produce fruits.
If memory serves me correctly, only male trees can be sold in a few states..
Besides it's stinky fruits, ginkgo trees are spectacular relics from a time long since past.
they have texture like Chestnuts, we normally boiled them with dry jujubes and little bit sugar and ginger on special occasion, they so expensive well may be to my family standard. Jujubes can be substitute with dates in if prepare in the country.
Quote:
Originally Posted by temptation001
What is the fruit of ginko good for anyway? Do people make pies?
they have texture like Chestnuts, we normally boiled them with dry jujubes and little bit sugar and ginger on special occasion, they so expensive well may be to my family standard. Jujubes can be substitute with dates in if prepare in the country.
Do you drink the concoction as a sort of tea, or do you turn it into a sort of liquor?
I've got a friend who has a Ginko Tree in his front yard. It's a beautiful tree. But part of the year his yard smells like one giant pile of cat poop.
For that reason alone I'll never have a Ginko in my yard.
The smell is butyric acid, the same chemical that makes vomit, parmesan cheese, and body odor so unappealing. In my urban neighborhood, we have a number of the trees planted in boxes along the roadside. I can not walk down the ginko-lined streets this time of year without being nearly overcome by the odor. Many of the fruits crack open when they fall and hit the sidewalk. There would be no way to trim the buds off of all the trees (which can grow to 75' or more) or even to sweep up all of the stinking fallen fruit. Last year, I accidentally crushed a fruit under my shoe before getting into my husband's car. His car then stank of ginko for weeks. Stepping in dog poop would have caused less of a smelly mess.
Regarding finding a male tree, I found this information on About.com (Forestry, - Profiles (http://forestry.about.com/od/silviculture/p/ginkgo.htm): - broken link)
Female plants are wider-spreading than the males. Only male plants should be used as the female produces foul smelling fruit in late autumn. The only way to select a male plant is to purchase a named cultivar including ‘Autumn Gold’, ‘ Fastigiata’, ‘Princeton Sentry’, and ‘Lakeview’ because there is no reliable way to select a male plant from a seedling until it fruits. It could take as long as 20 years or more for Ginkgo to fruit.
IOWA CITY, Iowa – The ginkgo tree is renowned for its hardiness, surviving everything from road salt to an atomic bomb, but it may be undone by another trait — it reeks.
"It's pretty disgusting," said Jan Schneider, an office manager in downtown Iowa City whose business has a ginkgo out front.
Smell has some cities ripping out ginkgo trees - Yahoo! News (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091005/ap_on_re_us/us_stinky_trees - broken link)
All you have to do is clean up the seeds that fall. How hard is that? I'm sure there are lots and lots of people on the welfare roles who could be effectively employed to provide this service to the city and keep it *sparkling* clean - of course, the work day couldn't start until Oprah was over with.
I don't know how hard it would be to keep the seeds cleaned up, but I would also hate to see a ginkgo cut down, male or female.....they're so beautiful. If I were younger (they grow so slowly!), I'd plant a whole grove of them along my driveway.
My mom used to live in a house that had one (male, apparently) in the yard....I'd guess it was probably 50 feel tall at least, and 30 feet wide at the base. Every fall it was just gorgeous. One year I took some pictures of my kids sitting in it....they were great. Another nice thing about them is that the leaves all fall pretty much at once, then they stay pretty on the ground for a long time....it's like a picture you'd see of fall in New England. And they do this even in the south! The branch structure, when mature, is very neat, too....horizontally layered, and the unique shape of the leaves gives it an unusual look even from pretty far away.
Any young people here thinking about planting trees and have time to let them grow, get one. Google them, click on images, and prepared to breathe, "Wow!" Here are a couple to get you started:
Btw, what is the correct spelling? I googled and came up with ginko, gingko, and ginkgo.
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