Ginkgo biloba: The Living Fossil
The Tree That Outlived the Dinosaurs Walk through any East Asian temple courtyard in late autumn and you might find yourself standing on a carpet of gold. The Ginkgo biloba—or maidenhair tree, as some call it—has been dropping its fan-shaped leaves for roughly 290 million years, making it the sole survivor of an entire order that watched the dinosaurs come and go. Fossils of the genus stretch back to the…





