This was the first ginkgo Granada ever grew, planted in 1889 in a garden that had itself only existed since 1840, on ground that used to be the vegetable orchard of a Jesuit college before the University of Granada's Faculty of Law took over the site. Ginkgo biloba is the last living member of a plant order that once grew across the entire planet during the age of dinosaurs, a lineage so isolated botanists sometimes call it a living fossil, and this specimen's fan-shaped leaves, turning a uniform gold each November, still look almost identical to fossil ginkgo leaves more than 200 million years old. The species is famous for a harder kind of survival too: six ginkgos within roughly a mile of Hiroshima's atomic bomb epicentre lived through the blast and are still growing today, a fact this specimen's own garden plaque, next to a poem written for the tree by the Granada poet Elena Martin Vivaldi, does not fail to mention. The garden is open to the public on university working days, free of charge, tucked behind the Faculty of Law's own building in the city centre.
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Getting there
Jardin Botanico de la Universidad de Granada, Facultad de Derecho, 18001 Granada
You can recognise it by the fan-shaped leaves, uniformly gold each November, and by the plaque beside a poem written for the tree by the Granada poet Elena Martin Vivaldi. It stands in the garden behind the Faculty of Law.
10 min walk from Puerta Real, city centre
Autumn colour
November, when its fan-shaped leaves turn gold
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from. The story was written with AI from these sources, and readers who know the tree correct it.
