The Ohatsuki Ginkgo of Yagisawa

In the autumn of 2011 a male tree produced roughly forty seeds. They hung eight to ten metres up, on one branch of a ginkgo that had never fruited in its recorded history, because that single limb had quietly reversed sex on its own. Researchers took grafting and seedling permits at the University of Tokyo's botanical garden between 2015 and 2017 to work out what had happened, and that remains the freshest confirmation on record that the tree is alive and being watched. It was already odd before that. Ohatsuki ginkgos carry their seeds on the leaf blade itself instead of on a stalk, a mutation rare enough that Japan has given the status of National Natural Monument to only seven of them. This one, on the grounds of Yamajinja shrine in Kamiyagisawa, is the only male of the seven, protected since July 1940. Botanists first described it in 1891, though the town's own page has also put that at 1896. Nobody has ever dated it properly. Local tradition called it about 180 years old at the time of the 2011 fruiting, which puts it near two centuries now, and that is tradition rather than measurement. The trunk measures 3 metres round at chest height, 3.94 at the base, under 25 metres of crown. Another of the seven stands less than two kilometres away, at Jotakuji temple.