How to Plant a Ginkgo Tree: Latest Planting Techniques and Methods Tutorial
The ginkgo tree is an excellent tree species valued for both its fruit and its timber. It has a tall and beautiful form and is also a graceful ornamental tree. Ginkgo has strong adaptability to soil, tolerating acid, alkali and drought, and can live for several hundred years, even over a thousand years; people call it the “gong-sun tree” (grandfather-grandson tree). Its fruit is rich in ginkgolic acid and ginkgol, is nutritious, and can be eaten or used as medicine. Its leaves can be used to make medicines such as “guanxintong” (coronary heart ketone), and can also be used as paddy field fertilizer and insecticide. Its wood is light and resilient, with a fine grain, and is not prone to warping or splitting, making it a fine material for construction, crafts and furniture.
Planting Value
Ginkgo is commonly known as the white fruit tree, the gong-sun tree, or the duck-foot tree. After the late Quaternary glaciation it survived only in China, and it is one of China's important specialty fruit trees. The ginkgo tree has great comprehensive utilization value. Its usable part is the kernel, which is nutritious, fragrant and glutinous, tasty, a premium tonic and an excellent ingredient for fine dishes, and it has a certain medicinal value, with effects such as resolving phlegm, relieving cough, tonifying the lungs, treating dysmenorrhea, stopping abnormal discharge, promoting urination and killing bacteria.
The ginkgo tree has a tall, upright and majestic posture, with clean and elegant leaves. It has a certain resistance to soot and dust pollution, can purify the air, and suffers very few pests and diseases, so it is also an important landscape tree and an excellent species for greening around homes and roadsides. It is also used to make stump bonsai.
Ginkgo wood is fine and soft, rich in elasticity, and not easily deformed, making it a material for fine crafts and precious household items, except that it takes too long to reach timber size and production is relatively low. The leaves can be extracted to make the new drug guanxintong for treating diseases of the vascular system; even fallen leaves can be used to sew medicinal pillows. The fleshy outer seed coat can be used to extract tannin, and when mashed and mixed with water it can be made into a homemade pesticide with insecticidal effects.
Main Types
Ginkgo currently survives as only one genus and one species. In addition, there are varieties such as the leaf-seed ginkgo, in which some seeds grow on the leaves, with the seed stalks fused into one. In plant classification, ginkgo belongs to the gymnosperms. The ovules are produced on the collar, with no ovary covering outside, so at maturity the seeds have no fruit skin on the outside. The drupe-like “fruit” commonly seen is actually the seed of the ginkgo.
Cultivated varieties are usually divided into three categories according to the traits of the seed and the seed kernel: Foshou (Buddha's hand), Meihe (plum kernel) and Malings.
The seed kernels of Foshou-type varieties are mostly long obovate to elliptical, with ridge lines on both sides but no obvious winged edges. The kernel is plump and sweet-tasting.
The seed kernels of Meihe-type varieties are smaller, usually nearly round and slightly flattened, often uneven in thickness on the dorsal and ventral sides; the ridge lines on both sides form an ellipse or spindle shape not far from the base, with ridges on the sides but inconspicuous wings.
The seed kernels of Malings-type varieties are elliptical or spindle-shaped, with ridges on the sides but inconspicuous wings. Their form is intermediate between the Foshou and Meihe types.
Growth Habits
Ginkgo is a deciduous fruit tree that grows slowly, bears late and lives long. It is dioecious, and often forms a tall crown with a strong trunk and obvious layering. Seedling trees mostly have a tower-shaped, conical or oval crown; grafted trees, when the central leader is missing or its growth is impeded, may begin to develop a semicircular or open-center crown in the later growth stage. The branches within the crown are clearly divided into two types: long shoots and short shoots. Long shoots are formed by several buds at the tip of a branch extending upward and outward, and they form the framework of the crown.
Short shoots are formed by buds in the middle and lower parts of a branch first forming a leaf rosette shoot, and then adding a very slight extension each year; the internodes are extremely short, and they are also called “scale branches” or “milk branches.” Under certain conditions, short shoots can also send out long shoots. In young trees under 10 years old, the proportion of long shoots sent out is relatively high, accounting for about 70% of the total number of shoots produced. In large trees over 50 years old, the number of long shoots sent out drops sharply, and the proportion of short shoots increases markedly, accounting for more than 80% of the total number of shoots produced, so the crowns of mature large trees are often rather sparse. Sometimes, latent buds on old trees or large branches can also sprout directly to form short shoots.
After reaching fruiting age, the female flowers and male inflorescences of the ginkgo tree are borne in clusters on the short shoots of female and male trees respectively. A short shoot has from 5 to 14 leaves, and generally a stout short shoot with 6 or more leaves can form flower buds. The flower buds are mixed buds, terminal; in spring they send out an extremely short shoot and then flower in the leaf axils. Each short shoot on a female tree can bear 2-14 seeds (usually 5-6). Whether a short shoot can form flower buds is related to the nutritional status of the tree and to the branch age and growth condition of the base branch on which the short shoot is borne. Generally, short shoots on base branches 3-12 years old bear the most fruit, and after that the fruiting capacity gradually declines.
The long shoots of ginkgo have an extremely high sprouting rate. Apart from the several buds at the tip that send out long shoots, the axillary buds on all the other nodes can send out short shoots and form flower buds that bloom and bear fruit, so it is very easy for alternate bearing to develop. However, short shoots on the same base branch sometimes show alternating fruiting. The leaf axils of short shoots on male trees bear male inflorescences, with 4-6 borne on each short shoot.