Science: Ginkgo

If the staid residents of Washington should see a dinosaur ambling through Rock Creek Park, they would be surprised. Logically they should be just as surprised at the ginkgo trees, imported from China, which actually grow in large numbers in Washington. The ginkgo or “maidenhair tree” (so called because its leaves resemble maidenhair fern) is a member of the gymnosperms, most primitive of seed plants, and is a relic of the Age of Reptiles, 150,000,000 years ago.

During their long survival into the modern world, the leaves of the ginkgo changed until they are now almost invariably two-lobed and kidney-shaped. In the Cretaceous period, 100,000,000 years ago, the leaves almost invariably were wedge-shaped. Last week the Smithsonian Institution announced that Dr. Roland W. Brown had discovered, in a park near the White House, a ginkgo with leaves of this Cretaceous type. “It can hardly be looked upon otherwise,” said the Smithsonian, “than as an atavism or throwback over a vast expanse of time.”