Plant · P-556

Ginkgo

Ginkgo biloba

Ginkgo is a living fossil, essentially unchanged for at least 150 million years and now surviving wild in only two small pockets of China. Its baked seed tastes something like a cross between potato and sweet chestnut, and its leaf is the source of the ginkgo extract sold worldwide for circulation and memory. Trees don't reveal their sex until 15 to 20 years old, and only females bear seed, wrapped in a fleshy coat that smells foul as it rots - which is why named male trees, not seedlings, line most streets. Otherwise nearly untouched by pests, disease, pollution or urban heat, it is one of the toughest trees there is.