The Ginkgo of the Serres d'Auteuil

In French this is the tree of forty crowns, the arbre aux quarante ecus, a folk name that by tradition goes back to the price a Parisian once paid for the first ginkgos brought into France. The city dates this one to 1895. It is the only large ginkgo on the register for the Jardin des Serres d'Auteuil, and by the register's figures it stands 24 metres tall with a trunk 434 centimetres round. The fact sheet says 25 metres and 425 centimetres. The garden itself is usually dated a few years later than the tree, to the end of the 1890s, and no source we have explains the gap, so we leave the two dates side by side rather than guess. Ginkgos are the last survivors of a line of trees that goes back to before the dinosaurs, and they came to Europe from gardens in China and Japan. Autumn is the reason to come. A ginkgo keeps its green late, then turns butter yellow across the whole crown in a matter of days, and drops it all almost at once. A guide to the garden mentions a ginkgo by the main entrance turning gold; whether that is this one, tell us if you know. Eighty metres away stands the garden's rare Chinese wingnut.