The Grafted Ginkgo of the Orto Botanico

Somebody grafted a female branch onto this male ginkgo in the middle of the 19th century, so one tree here sheds pollen in spring and drops fruit in autumn from the same trunk. Ginkgos are normally one sex or the other, and the female fruit is famous for smelling like something died, so the graft was either a teaching exercise or a practical joke that has outlived everyone involved. The tree was planted in 1750, among the first of its kind brought to Italy. The garden's register goes further and says it may have been the first in the country and the second in Europe, after a tree planted in Utrecht in 1727; treat that as the register's claim rather than a settled fact. It stands 17 to 20 metres tall on a trunk four metres round. The species is the last survivor of an order of plants that was widespread before the dinosaurs and had been reduced to a few cultivated Chinese groves by the time European collectors found it, a biography nothing else in this garden can match. The register rates its condition as adequate rather than good, last checked in July 2026, so this is not a tree without problems. Come in November anyway.