The Ginkgo of the Hortus

Ginkgo is the only surviving species of an entire order of plants, a lineage already old when the first dinosaurs appeared and one that outlived them by sixty-six million years. Everything else on that branch has been a fossil since the Jurassic. Which particular trunk this entry points at is less certain than the biology. The Bomenstichting guide records a monumental ginkgo in the Hortus planted between 1890 and 1900. Amsterdam's own register lists two ginkgos here, fifteen metres apart, both dated 1930. The pin sits on the thicker of the pair, N1771, at 321 centimetres around, because girth is a better guide to age than a register date, but nothing so far proves the two sources describe the same tree. Read the location as this corner of the garden rather than one exact trunk, and the age as somewhere between ninety-five and a hundred and thirty-five years. Come in November. Ginkgo leaves are small stiff fans, they turn a flat uniform gold rather than the mottled reds of everything around them, and then the tree lets almost all of them go within a couple of days, so the ground underneath goes yellow at once. Entry needs a Hortus ticket.