Ginkgo biloba is the oldest tree lineage on this site by tens of millions of years, a species that outlived the dinosaurs it grew alongside and, in a few documented cases near Hiroshima, outlived a nuclear blast. It also does something almost no other tree manages: every leaf turns the same uniform gold within days of its neighbours, then drops nearly all at once, rather than fading gradually like the rest of autumn. That trick is reason enough to plan a trip around, and these ten specimens, from a 750 year old survivor of the 1945 Tokyo firebombing to a pair planted the same year Milan's botanical garden opened, all perform it within weeks of each other. Most peak in November. Start with the oldest, in a Tokyo temple where a monk's walking staff is said to have taken root eight centuries ago.
Legend says a Buddhist monk planted his walking staff here in 1229 and it took root; tree rings put the trunk at a real 750 years, the oldest living thing in Tokyo. American incendiary bombs scorched it black in March 1945, and it kept growing anyway. Every late November it turns the gold that now draws photographers who have never heard of the monk.
146 ginkgos, already six metres tall, were transplanted here in 1923 and spaced nine metres apart so the avenue funnels toward the Meiji Memorial Picture Gallery's dome from every angle. A century on the tallest reaches 28 metres, and every November the whole street turns the same uniform gold, filling with tour groups and engagement shoots in equal number.
A female branch was grafted onto this male tree at some point in its life, so it now drops the strong smelling seeds normally produced only by female ginkgos, a genuine oddity. It arrived in Vienna in 1781 and is likely the oldest ginkgo in Austria, listed as a protected monument since 1939. Each October into November every leaf turns gold and falls within days, all at once.
Berlin's largest ginkgo, planted into a former manor park sometime between 1880 and 1890 when wealthy estates across Europe grew them as botanical status symbols. Its trunk has grown over three metres around, and every late October its leaves turn a uniform gold within days of each other before dropping almost at once.
Two dated assessments of this Prague ginkgo disagree by 80 years, one from 1804 planting records and one from a 2016 tree survey, so this page states the honest range rather than pick a side. Prague declared it a protected memorial tree in 2004, and every November its fan shaped leaves turn a single uniform gold and drop within days.
A male and female pair, grown from seed carried from China and planted together in 1775 when Empress Maria Theresa's botanical garden was barely a year old, making them the oldest documented trees in Milan by a wide margin. The university marked their joint 250th anniversary in March 2026, and every November their leaves turn a uniform gold and drop within days, briefly carpeting the courtyard behind the Pinacoteca di Brera.
The smallest of Bologna's officially monumental trees by height, standing in the city's first deliberately designed public square since roughly its 1870s laying out. Bolognese singer Lucio Dalla lived facing the square for decades, and the ginkgo outside his windows turns a near luminous, synchronised yellow every November.
Millions of people photograph Florence's skyline from this terrace every year and almost none of them photograph the tree they are standing under to do it. Planted among the ornamental species architect Giuseppe Poggi chose when he built the viewing terrace in 1875, it turns a uniform gold every November and briefly carpets the ground in a colour that photographs better than the skyline behind it.
Granada's first ginkgo, planted in 1889 in a garden that had only existed since 1840, on ground that used to be a Jesuit college's vegetable orchard. Six of this species within a mile of Hiroshima's atomic bomb epicentre survived the blast and are still growing today, a fact this specimen's own garden plaque does not fail to mention alongside its own November gold.
Verona's monumental tree register lists this as a group rather than a single trunk, sharing a small garden with the square's much taller plane tree. Its precise age is undocumented, but Verona chose this square to launch a 2018 public tree-history project scanning QR codes onto its oldest trees, treating this ginkgo as one of the city's significant living landmarks regardless.
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