The Ginkgo of Toul

An admiral is said to have brought this tree home in his luggage. Henri de Rigny was born in Toul in 1782, and both the town and the departmental tourist board credit him with carrying a cutting or a seed north from a ginkgo in Toulon around 1804. Neither cites a period document, so it stays strong local tradition rather than settled fact. The tree itself is not in doubt: 21.84 metres when it was measured for its label, and if that 1804 planting holds, somewhere near 220 years old. That would make it an early one for France. Ginkgo biloba has no living relatives, reached European gardens only in the eighteenth century, and was still a botanical curiosity when this one went into the ground behind the town hall. Mid-November is the fortnight Toul waits for. A ginkgo does not fade into autumn so much as switch: the whole crown goes gold, holds for days, then drops most of it in one windless morning. Local guides like to say the Ecole de Nancy designers took their cue from foliage like this, a line repeated often and sourced nowhere. On 7 June 2015 it became the 375th tree in the country to carry the label Arbre remarquable de France. Nobody has published a girth for it. If you have had a tape around the trunk, tell us.