what is this tree?

The rotten fruit smells like crap. Literally. It can turn whole blocks into wreaking sewers. But the trees are gorgeous.

Yea, it does smell like dog crap.

It is the female gingko tree that makes the fruit/seeds.
But you dont know which one you have until decades later:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9500E0DB1538F932A35753C1A9649C8B63

Q & A; Avoiding Ginkgo Fruit

By C. CLAIBORNE RAY
Published: October 1, 2002

Q. The female ginkgo tree on my street is dropping its smelly fruit on the pavement. Is there no way that the sex of a tree can be determined before it is planted?

A. It is scientifically possible to determine whether a young Ginkgo biloba tree is male or female, but a DNA test would be far too expensive for routine use.

The trees do not reach reproductive age and publicly reveal their sex for two or three decades or more. Nurseries often produce their planting trees using cuttings, to make sure that only males end up on the street, according to an extensive Web site at www.xs4all.nl/kwanten/, maintained by a teacher and ginkgo fan, Cor Kwant of the Netherlands.

The decaying fruit's outer coating is said to smell like rancid butter; the odor comes from butyric acid. The coating also contains an oil called urushiol, which in sensitive people can produce reactions not unlike those to poison ivy and raw cashews, which also contain it. Once its coating is removed by thorough rinsing (using rubber gloves), the nut can be toasted and eaten like any other nut and is a delicacy in Asia.

Ginkgos have an unusual method of reproduction. The sperm, which usually reaches the female trees by being windblown, moves on its own within the ovules found on the female tree. It is not clear whether fertilization of the egg nucleus takes place while the fruit is still on the tree or months after it has fallen. C. CLAIBORNE RAY

Its really too bad because it really is an absolutely beautiful tree with fantastic leaves.

So if you want one, it may be possible to break off a branch of a mature, non-fruit-producing male and plant those branches...? I'm not a horticulturist, so I'm not sure if that is completely fool-proof plan.....

god i hate those things. i hate them especially in prospect park. i wish they would rid them all of them!!!

lilbangladesh wrote: ...usually such an imbalance of tree sexes in the city.

Next on Nova: Darren Star presents...

sassy_music.loadSound("cha-cha.mp3",true);

well if you ever get plant hormones you take a cutting of a branch plant it in any material but outside garden soil. within a short time roots will take root.

daver wrote: [quote=pitu][quote=SevenOneEighty]So if you want one, it may be possible to break off a branch of a mature, non-fruit-producing male and plant those branches...? I'm not a horticulturist, so I'm not sure if that is completely fool-proof plan.....

amateur hortimiculturaly speaking, you'd have better odds trying to sprout the fruit than with breaking off a branch.
Well, except that didn't I read above that the male is non fruit producing, making this somewhat difficult?

You could use the fruit and take your chances.
But it also seems like I was not that far off anyway...some quick web research, below:

One of the reasons some gingkos are considered endangered is because of the grafting of male 'cultivars' for growth...apparently this is a common practice because of the preference for non-fruit bearing male trees:

http://hcs.osu.edu/pocketgardener/source/description/gi_iloba.html

propagated primarily by cuttings from male cultivars grafted onto seedling rootstock, but also propagated by seed (where the gender of the offspring is often not visually determined for at least twenty years)

..I was just guessing.

Also, remember, it could take decades to determine the sex of the tree....it may be too late then.

pitu wrote: [quote=SevenOneEighty][quote=daver][quote=pitu][quote=SevenOneEighty]So if you want one, it may be possible to break off a branch of a mature, non-fruit-producing male and plant those branches...? I'm not a horticulturist, so I'm not sure if that is completely fool-proof plan.....

amateur hortimiculturaly speaking, you'd have better odds trying to sprout the fruit than with breaking off a branch.
Well, except that didn't I read above that the male is non fruit producing, making this somewhat difficult?

You could use the fruit and take your chances.
But it also seems like I was not that far off anyway...some quick web research, below:

One of the reasons some gingkos are considered endangered is because of the grafting of male 'cultivars' for growth...apparently this is a common practice because of the preference for non-fruit bearing male trees:

http://hcs.osu.edu/pocketgardener/source/description/gi_iloba.html

propagated primarily by cuttings from male cultivars grafted onto seedling rootstock, but also propagated by seed (where the gender of the offspring is often not visually determined for at least twenty years)

..I was just guessing.

Also, remember, it could take decades to determine the sex of the tree....it may be too late then.

Grafting on root stock is different from breaking off a branch and sticking it in the ground. The city must buy grafted male trees tho, since they don't plant the female ginkos anymore because of the mess and stink.
This will be a loss to the Chinese community -- there's ladies in my nabe that gather up the fruit as soon as it falls, for the ginko nuts within.

I don't think the root hormone thing works for big ol' tree limbs. I do that with tender plants, not woody stuff.
Do you know something I don't, armchair?

Um, I know....

I was just pulling from my bonsai experience - I have started a few from branches from full grown trees...again, it was just a guess. I was approaching it more from a "concept" of selecting 'stock' from a male tree as a starting point...

Here's an abstract from a case report of one kid that got poisoned:

Hasegawa S, Oda Y, Ichiyama T, Hori Y, Furukawa S. Ginkgo nut intoxication in a 2-year-old male. Pediatr Neurol 2006 Oct;35(4):275-6.
Department of Allergy, Yamaguchi University, School of Medicine, and Department of Hospital Pharmacy, Niigata City General Hospital, Japan.

This report describes a case of ginkgo nut intoxication in a 2-year-old male. The patient presented with vomiting and afebrile convulsion 4 hours after eating a large number of roasted gingko nuts. There was a large volume of ginkgo nuts in his vomited matter, and on admission the concentrations of 4-O-methoxypyridoxine in his serum and urine were elevated. The patient was diagnosed as having ginkgo nut intoxication, and diazepam and pyridoxal phosphate were administered intravenously. After the treatment, his symptoms were resolved. The neurotoxicity of ginkgo nuts should be recognized by pediatricians and parents who have infants.

PMID: 16996402 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Here's another:

Miwa H, Iijima M, Tanaka S, Mizuno Y. Generalized convulsions after consuming a large amount of gingko nuts. Epilepsia 2001 Feb;42(2):280-1.
Departments of Neurology, Juntendo University Urayasu Hospital, Chiba, Japan. [email protected]

We report a 36-year-old woman, without any past or family histories of epilepsy, who presented frequent vomiting and generalized convulsions. About 4 h before the convulsion, she had consumed approximately 70-80 gingko nuts, seeds of Gingko biloba, in an attempt to improve her health. It is important to know that convulsion may be induced if a large amount of gingko nuts is consumed. The neurotoxicity of gingko nuts, particularly their convulsion-inducing effect, should be recognized.

PMID: 11240603 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

pitu wrote:
I don't think the root hormone thing works for big ol' tree limbs. I do that with tender plants, not woody stuff.
Do you know something I don't, armchair?

i was being lazy. if you want to clone tree's do it with leafs . extra writing sucks for me hehe.

note: i haven't done any type of plant cloning in over a decade with hormones . only cloning i done with them is just plan cut roots apart and hope for the best hehe. cheaper super failure is about more than half.

lilbangladesh wrote: I just dispute that you could poison yourself just by touching the berries. Now maybe if you rolled around naked in a pile of them you could give yourself something nasty, but I'm not about to do that.

I posted two links to documented dermatitis outbreaks caused by kids playing with them, not eating them, FYI...

you can get the jist by reading the abstracts, which are free. as were 2 of the 4 links daver put up. or you could just trust him.

just because you didn't have a problem, doesn't mean it doesn't happen. i'm skin-allergic to mango skin. so are lots of other people, though not everyone.

according to some class at the BBG, nyc actually banned ginko trees from the city in the 70s(?) but still they prevail.

also, ginko nuts are toxic -- but they are only situational toxicants. they can be used medicinally: usually short term & for people with disease patterns that match the function of the ginko nut. they are toxic in a similar way that too much alcohol can be toxic to the body.

also, ginko nuts harvested in nyc seem suspect --- who knows what those trees have absorbed from the ground or from insecticides are dropped on us in the city -- yuck.

No.