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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.
Request - Book "Ginkgo biloba L. 1771 - All about ginkgo (or maidenhair tree)" Vol 1-3
Wow, can you grow those in sub tropical climates? They sound pretty interesting. Does anyone know anything about Bonzai art? Could I turn a ginko into a Bonzai plant? I would have to worry about the seen then, would I?
Wow, can you grow those in sub tropical climates? They sound pretty interesting. Does anyone know anything about Bonzai art? Could I turn a ginko into a Bonzai plant? I would have to worry about the seen then, would I?
Yep, when I lived in Kansas City they grew just fine there. Also, it's only the females that smell so bad, and that's only if they fruit. They don't fruit every year; I think the one across the road from me when I lived in KC only fruited once in eight years. But yes, it did reek to high heaven. I was continually looking for whatever dead thing might be rotting in the bushes...
No one had to tell me about this. As a youth, I had the misfortune of having a 60 foot fruit bearing Ginko in the front yard and was the designated landscape specialist who had to rid the yard of leaves and fruit every year. Dog poop is the closest thing in my world to describe the smell. Occasionally, as a junior high student I would take a sandwich bag of the ripe fruit and stuff it between a radiator and the wall at school. That ended as soon as I was identified as the perp with the tree in his yard.
The leaves are a really big problem. They fall quite late and then do not dry out. They stay flat. They get wet and stay wet and are impossible to rake up. Its like raking up a yard covered with wet playing cards.
Really quite a mess. Can't understand why anyone would want one.
They're beautiful for one thing. And they're not impossible to rake up, just require a little different effort (I was designated raker in my parent's yard 'till I went to college).
They do take quite a long time to fruit. The one in my parents yard (planted probably 5 to 10 years before I was born) didn't start fruiting until I was about 30. And yes - the fruit smells a bit like vomit.
But, you only notice it when you are in the backyard with the fruit. Not in the front yard, or driving up the driveway or anything.
And yep - raking up the fruit (like raking up crabapples) is a bit of a pain, but once the fruit's gone - the smell's gone. So a lovely tree for 12 months of the year, with a minor inconvenience for about 1 month of the year.
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