Ginkgo tree links Cornell to the ancients By Charles Milhauser
Shading the President's House for more than 150 years is a
magnificent male Ginkgo biloba, the oldest tree on the Hilltop
and older than the college. He stands over 85 feet tall and has
a crown that spreads more than 75 feet. The Iowa Conservation
Commission has named him a "State Champion tree … the largest
reported of [his] species growing in the State of Iowa."
Ginkgoes are the sole living link between the ferns and conifers
and the oldest known living species of tree: their fossils show
they have not changed in 270 million years. The extinction of
the dinosaurs, which ate and dispersed the seeds, and some
natural disasters (an ice age or two) wiped out the ginkgo's
European and American branches. Some of the latter now lie in
Washington's Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park. One species
held on tenaciously in southeastern China, where monks
considered the tree divine and planted it near temples.
Confucius taught under a ginkgo. From China the t