ginkgo

Seeds: 4  / Botanical name: Ginkgo biloba

Goethe's favorite tree

Botanically, the ginkgo is a fan-shaped tree. This species, often called a bridge plant, combines the characteristics of a conifer with those of a deciduous tree and dates back to the age of the dinosaurs. Its actual needles are so broad that they resemble two opposing leaf halves joined in the middle. In an ideal location, the ginkgo tree can grow 30 to 50 centimeters in height per year. It is not susceptible to typical plant diseases – its resilience, ironically, makes it ideal for planting in polluted cities.

The tree grows in a distinctive, spreading form with horizontally spreading branches. Ginkgo trees can be male or female, although this distinction is only possible after about 30 years. In large parts of East Asia, the tree is cultivated and revered as a temple plant due to its longevity. Its name is derived from the Japanese name for silver apricot – gin ​​kyo – and the suffix biloba describes the typical, two-lobed leaf.

And then, of course, Goethe! He was in constant contact with the Weimar court gardener, and he immortalized his love for the ginkgo in his poem of the same name, which he wrote for his late love, Marianne von Willemer:

This tree leaf,
entrusted from the East to my garden,
offers a taste of secret meaning,
as it edifies the wise.

Is it a living being
that is divided within itself?
Are they two, so perfectly matched
that they are perceived as one?

To answer such questions,
I thought I had found the right meaning.
Don't you feel in my songs
that I am both one and two?

Natural habitat: The ginkgo originated in the region of present-day China – there it was the only species of its kind to survive the Ice Age. Around 1730 it also became naturalized in Europe.