The Weteringplantsoen Ginkgo

There is a ginkgo growing on a traffic island on the Weteringschans, and it is the least likely thing on this list. The species is around 200 million years old, older than the flowering plants, and it survives in the wild in a handful of Chinese valleys. Its Dutch name, tempelboom, records how it got through: monks planted it in temple grounds and kept it going while it disappeared everywhere else. This one lives between lanes of traffic. Amsterdam put it in somewhere between 1910 and 1920 and the register records no history for it whatsoever, which suits a tree that simply gets on with things. Ginkgo tolerates exactly the conditions that kill other street trees: compacted soil, road salt, exhaust, root space measured in single square metres. Several ginkgos within two kilometres of the Hiroshima hypocentre survived the bomb and are still growing. Come in November. For eleven months this is a green tree with odd fan-shaped leaves that people walk past without a glance. Then over about a week the whole crown turns a flat saturated gold, and then it drops the lot, often in a day or two, leaving a gold ring on the tarmac around it. Traffic islands rarely get a moment like that. Free, always visible, and easy to miss for most of the year. The wych elm, the leaning poplar and the plane are all a minute or two away.