By the time you are reading this the largest resident of the 800 block of West 38th Street will look different than he does right now. He will likely have shed every yellow leaf, creating a monochromatic blanket beneath his finally skeletal branches. The golden yellow blanket is a late-year rite of passage on our street. In my neighbor group chat, we share photos, both past and present, and try to predict his shed-date. The only certainties are late fall, impressive drop radius, and the uninterrupted layer of leaves covering the cars, road, and sidewalk of the houses at the top of the block. Fortunately, our big gingko is male–the female gingko trees shed berries which smell a lot like vomit. Our big guy seems to cling longer than any other gingko in the neighborhood as here we are on November 30, still waiting. (In 2017, he dropped on November 11 when the leaves were still green.) So on West 38th, in vigil we sit, like family members of someone in the final stages of labor. 

I’ve known gingko trees my whole life. The church we attended throughout my childhood sat on top of a hill, dotted with gingkoes. The Newman Center consisted of a small chapel next to a stately white Victorian house with a wraparound porch and jet black shutters. And the long driveway up to the church was often speckled with fan shaped leaves, gingko berries, and that unmistakable smell. 

I remember playing out the book A Little Princess with my sister and our church friends, sitting in the shade of those trees. Maybe as kids we were unaware of the beauty surrounding us. Or rather, maybe we were the most aware–I never saw the adults out there playing orphan-themed games on the gingko hill. That place felt like a Sunday home and the trees were the walls and the ceiling and the carpet, the furniture, the bed, and a sort of parent looking out for us from a high height.

Gingko trees are famous for their unique leaf shape, their offensive berry smell, and for their resilience. Several gingkos famously survived the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and still stand today. (Why the Gingko? Smithsonian.) 

Scientists have also studied ancient gingko fossils’ traits to compare the carbon dioxide in the air long ago, to today–through the gingko, they’re able to compare prehistoric atmosphere to current conditions. According to this article from Thursd., the gingko is “One of the oldest living tree species in the world… It is the lone surviving member of a long-extinct group of trees that existed before dinosaurs roamed the planet, between 245 and 66 million years ago. The species is referred to as a ‘living fossil’ because it is so old.” The health applications also make the gingko special. Its healing properties are said to help with memory loss, blood abnormalities, eye and vascular health, and possibly more. Gingkoes are messengers from the past, story keepers, warriors, and healers.

Our West 38th Street ginkgo is so large that it ripples the sidewalk next to it–don’t tell DPW. Every fall people come to our street just to capture photos of it. I found a formula online for estimating the age of a gingko that is not as accurate as ring-counting but still should be close to correct. Our gingko is 13 feet around (156 inches), with a diameter of 49.68 inches. A gingko has a growth factor of 3.5-4, making this big guy 173.88-198.72 years old. I wouldn’t bet my life on the accuracy of that measurement but I did all I could. That measurement would certainly make the tree older than our homes which were built about 100 years ago. Maybe it had brothers and sisters that didn’t align with the street plans for this neighborhood and had to go. A sort of eminent domain. Perhaps our tree was the one left standing because it happened to stand between the sidewalk and the street in 1920. 

West 38th Street, Hampden, Baltimore, this country, and the planet have done a lot of changing over 173.88-198.72 years and will do even more in the next 173.88-198.72 years. We have this living fossil among us–one we can admire and photograph, discuss and try to predict, learn from and about. In the midst of such a chaotic world, this tree provides some constancy, some stability, some sense that yes, many creatures are still growing as they should, roots are still drinking water in unseen underground networks, leaves are still blooming and falling and blanketing and blowing away, in a reliable, predictable, beautiful and mournful cycle. As we come and go down our street, as we lift our stroller wheels over the hump in the sidewalk and yell for the thousandth time to a running toddler to “watch your step at the tree!” may Sir Gingko be the constant in our lives, witnessing us come and go, evolve and change, move away and stay put, endure and enjoy, annually relying on that yellow blanket to embrace us once again.