Ginkgo Biloba Or Biloba: Cultivation And Medicinal Properties

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Ginkgo biloba is a relic plant in your apartment and even in the garden

Anyone who at least once saw the leaves of this plant, even if only in the picture, will never forget them and will not confuse them with any others.

There are simply no others like this in the world! Perhaps petrified, imprinted in coal and preserved in this form.

The entire class of ginkgoids - dozens, maybe hundreds of species (who can now say absolutely exactly how many there were) - have become extinct. There is only one left - ginkgo biloba - one of the oldest woody plants on Earth, so to speak, a living fossil of the plant world.

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Ginkgo ferns originated from ancient seed ferns, the first reliable remains of them have been known to science since the Permian period, but they appeared, apparently, even earlier. And they were widely developed in the Mesozoic era, especially at the end of the Jurassic and early Cretaceous periods, i.e. at the time of the greatest distribution of dinosaurs. They are the ancestors of all existing conifers, and extinct ones too.

The natural area of distribution of ginkgo biloba is currently negligible - a small area in the Dian Mu-Shan mountains in Eastern China, on the border of Zhejiang and Anhui provinces. For a long time, it was even believed that the species was preserved only in a culture in which from ancient times it was quite common in China, Korea and Japan.

There he was given beautiful lyrical names: silver apricot, silver fruit and others, although they do not correspond to his true position in plant taxonomy. And where is it for decorativeness, delicious nutritious seeds, as well as medicinal and other useful properties from ancient times grown.

Ginkgo is a very durable tree, among its plantings in these countries there are individual specimens of more than a thousand years of age. It was opened for Europe in 1690 by E. Kempfer, a doctor at the Dutch embassy in Japan. He also gave the first scientific description of it, published in London in 1712.

Around 1730, ginkgo was introduced to Western Europe, where it eventually spread throughout southern Europe. After another half century, it was introduced to North America, and later it was widely settled in many other countries of the subtropical belt. In 1771, one plant was sent from England to Karl Linnaeus, who gave the species a botanical name and introduced it into his classification.

Ginkgo is a slender, dioecious deciduous tree of the first size up to 40 meters high, and according to some literary sources even up to 70, and up to 4 meters in diameter. Young trees have a pyramidal crown, which becomes spreading with age. Its branches are often brought together and form a kind of whorls extending from the trunk almost horizontally. They have two types of shoots: elongated and shortened.

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On the first leaves are located singly, on the second - in bunches of 5-7 pieces. They are simple, leathery, fan-shaped or broadly wedge-shaped with multiple dichotomous veins and a notch at the end that divides the leaf in half (it is because of it that the ginkgo is called biloba); with thin, elastic and long, up to 10 cm, petioles.

Sometimes young plants have leaves with 4-8 lobes. They fall in late autumn, before becoming golden yellow. The bark is thin; gray; rough; in adults with longitudinal cracks. Wood with well-defined rings, very light and soft, similar in mechanical properties to spruce. Most of the trunk is light brown sapwood. The core is yellowish-brown, the core is poorly developed.

Unlike conifers, ginkgo has no resin. Its wood is used to make furniture and various crafts. The reproductive organs are located only on shortened shoots. In females, from one to seven seeds can form on each of them.

Ginkgo blooms in April-May, pollinated by the wind. Enters fruiting late, at 25-30 years. Until that time, it is not possible to determine which specimen is in front of you, male or female. Therefore, to increase the productivity of plantations in countries where this species is cultivated as an agricultural crop, cuttings of female ones are grafted into the crowns of male plants. And for better pollination of the latter, the reverse operation is sometimes carried out with them.

The seeds are outwardly similar to a plum, large, up to 2 cm long, drupe-like, ellipsoid, are in a fleshy, amber-yellow, resinous, sticky shell when ripe. After cleaning it and subsequent boiling or frying, they are eaten, in addition, they are used in traditional oriental medicine, in particular for bronchial asthma and other diseases. The latest medical research has confirmed the medicinal properties of ginkgo seeds and leaves. Now such medicines as ginkor, reweilginkgo and others are produced from them.

The seeds can germinate as soon as their embryo is sufficiently developed, so they do not have a dormant period. Their ability to germinate in humid conditions lasts about a year. During germination, the cotyledons do not come to the surface, but remain inside the seeds underground. The first two leaves that appear have a scaly shape, and the next ones are characteristic of the fan type.

In addition to ginkgo seeds, it can multiply by cuttings, gives pneumatic shoots.

Ginkgo - light-loving, thermophilic and moisture-loving trees, they are especially sensitive to humidity (they do not tolerate dryness); love fertile and fresh soil, but can put up with poor soil. They tolerate gas pollution, dustiness and smoke, they are resistant to fungal and viral diseases, and are not damaged by pests. And most importantly, they are very decorative and picturesque.

In our country, ginkgo was initially introduced on the Black Sea coast of the Crimea and the Caucasus, but over time it began to be cultivated further and further north. Currently, it is successfully grown in a tree form along the Kaliningrad-Volgograd line. The first time I met this plant was on the Black Sea coast, in Adler, in the arboretum of the Southern Cultures state farm (before that I had only read about it in scientific literature).

There he was a young, about two meters high, very graceful tree with an unusually beautiful crown. Later, I saw him several times in the greenhouses of the Botanical Garden. But the latter exists to grow rare, often very capricious exotic species, so I only admired it there, but then I did not even have any thoughts about growing it.

And then we met him … at my own institute! Literally in a neighboring laboratory, where colleagues grew it as an ordinary houseplant in a box with soil, however, not in the form of a slender tree, but in the form of a low gnarled bush, which, moreover, shed its leaves for 2-3 months in winter. It was at this time that I saw him there for the first time, therefore, to be honest, at first I did not recognize him. Of course, being in such a state during the winter months, the plant at this time clearly does not decorate the interior of the premises, but what can you do, although it is southern, subtropical, it is still deciduous.

Nevertheless, this proves that lovers of unusual, exotic indoor plants can successfully cultivate it at home on the windowsill, and the ability of the latter to reproduce by cuttings makes it easy enough to replicate the required number of copies. It is only desirable that the plant be placed in a cooler place during the dormant period, and also during this time, watering should be somewhat reduced.

However, a complete revelation even for me, a specialist, was that ginkgo turned out to be such a plastic species that it was able to adapt to existence not only in the middle lane, but even in the harsh conditions of the Northwest. There are few other, much younger and more progressive subtropical species in the world that could be so easily and quickly acclimated in our zone.

True, here it grows as a low tree, or as a squat, creeping bush, like a low quince, since its branches often freeze over the snow cover. So, in the Main Botanical Garden in Moscow, nine ginkgo trees grow in open ground without shelter for the winter, the largest of which is already 5 m tall. There is a copy of it in the park of our BIN them. V. L. Komarov.

The question is, is it worth growing ginkgo? After all, the fruits from him, most likely, will not wait! Not only is it two-domain and it is impossible to determine the sex of the plant before the start of fruiting, as already mentioned, therefore, there is always a danger (you are unlikely to get a lot of them) that they will all be same-sex. But fruiting itself, as already mentioned, comes very late, you have to wait decades!

As a consolation about the negligible likelihood of obtaining seeds under our conditions, it should be said that when ripe, their soft shell, containing butyric acid, exudes a very strong, unpleasant smell of rancid oil. Therefore, in the United States, when growing trees for decorative purposes, in order to avoid fruiting and, accordingly, odor, all grown seedlings are grafted in nurseries with a male kidney so that there are only specimens of one of this sex in the plantings. And, nevertheless, despite all that has been said, it seems to me that it is still worth growing ginkgo in our conditions.

Not only is it very decorative in this form, but, most importantly, all the other valuable properties of this species are preserved. And they are very significant and interesting. Firstly: insects do not tolerate the smell of its leaves at all, although by human standards, the latter, unlike seeds, almost do not smell. Is that slightly, and then if you take a good sniff, a little bit rancid oil.

The moth completely disappears from the cabinets in which they are placed. And mosquitoes and flies do not fly in at all, and other insects also disappear into apartments, in which these are laid out in some places (even dry ones). Secondly, ginkgo leaves, as already partly mentioned, have medicinal properties. They are used in the treatment of sclerosis, varicose veins, thrombophlebitis and other diseases of the circulatory system, as well as other diseases. And, finally, this is just a beautiful plant with unique, original leaves.