The Ginkgo of the Geology Building

This ginkgo does not turn gold until January. In cooler countries the species is bare by late November, but this one stands at sea level in a subtropical city, and the warmth holds its leaves green for weeks longer, so the colour arrives in deep winter when nobody is looking up. It grows outside the Geology Science Building at National Taiwan University, beside a dawn redwood. Somebody chose that pairing on purpose. Both trees get called living fossils, which is a dry joke to plant at the door of a building where people spend their days reading rock. Ginkgo is uncommon in lowland Taiwan, and a full grown one on an open campus with nothing between you and it is worth the walk on its own. The campus keeps that walk short: the Common Three Pines stand a few minutes away on the same road, so the two stops read as one afternoon. The age is the gap in this entry. Figures circulate, from a few decades to a planting under Japanese rule, and none of them holds up when you go looking for the source behind it, so the field stays empty rather than filled with whichever number we like best. If you know when this tree went in, tell us and it goes on the page.