Ginkgo trees in boston

In other words, the flares of most ginkgoes are buried and need to be exposed at planting. Ginkgo will grow in a wide range of soils as long as there is ample moisture and decent drainage. The only places in Texas where the plant will not grow well are in solid white rock, in unhealthy soils or in soils that are too dry. Ginkgo tolerates a wide range of rough conditions such as downtown urban sites, smoky areas, air pollution and confined-root-system spaces — but not dead or compacted soil.

Maybe because they are such ancient trees, ginkgoes respond well to the organic program and grow as much as 20 inches a year in ideal conditions. Those ideal conditions include soil that has plenty of carbon organic matter , ample life microorganisms, worms, etc. High-nitrogen synthetic fertilizer is the main thing to omit from your ginkgo management.

Another point is that it will grow in the shade as well as in the sun. I discovered that fact when I learned the most interesting thing about ginkgoes: They can change sex. Also on Centennial and throughout campus , red maple trees will turn a deep, rich red, and a Chinese chestnut tree will turn to a golden yellow. Redbud trees, such as the ones near Veterans Memorial and the koi pond outside the Curry Student Center, turn a rich yellow color.

Ginkgo trees, found at either end of the pedestrian bridge near the Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Complex, feature a unique fan-shape leaf that turns bright yellow in the fall. Oak, chestnut, maple and beech trees feature stunning fall colors, providing beautiful accents to the historical architecture in the area. For an iconic city snapshot, cross over to the Cambridge side and take a photo of the Boston skyline in all its autumnal glory.

Brownstone houses, cobblestone streets and fall foliage make for an Instagram-ready combination. Beacon Hill is also home to one of the most photographed streets in the city— Acorn Street —and offers visitors a trip back to colonial Boston. Dazzling fall displays can be easily navigated with their new mobile app available on the arboretum website.

The quintessential leafy college campus explodes with color during the autumn season as ivy covered walls compete with stately oaks for the best in fall color.

For more botanical enjoyment, head to the Harvard Museum of Natural History to explore the collection of glass replicas of more than 3, plant species.

History and foliage converge at the birthplace of the American Revolution. Travel a bit further, and you can enjoy the resplendent displays throughout New England:.

Originally a Native American trade route, the mile route runs east to west through the northwest part of Massachusetts, straddling the Berkshire Mountains between the Hudson and Connecticut River valleys. A city that contains thousands of ginkgo trees may in fact contain thousands of copies of a few individuals. While ginkgo is currently not troubled by pests and pathogens, having only a few clones is a risk for future problems.

I love ginkgo trees, as most of us do. But ginkgo is not helping to create diverse, resilient cities. Instead of endless planting of ginkgo, we urgently need to diversify our urban forests with diverse plantings of seedlings of many species.

We need to prepare our cities for climate change, and greatly increase not just our urban forest canopy, but our urban forest diversity. We have more than enough ginkgo trees now. Thank you for your insight on avoiding the further use of ginkgo in the built environment. However, I must take exception with your position as stated. The urban environment is certainly less hospitable to both flora and fauna than native habitats.

We plant trees in the urban environment for the multitude of human benefits, wildlife being only one. Urban biological systems are far more complex than simplistic statements will allow. Rather than avoiding the use of ginkgo in the urban environment, I continue to encourage the practice of matching the species to the site. Ginkgo is one of our toughest, most adaptable, most attractive and structurally stable species for sites where other species fail to thrive or fail structurally endangering human life and property.

The absence of biological pests e. With limited municipal resources for urban tree care it makes economic sense to use this and other species that will allow us to stretch otherwise limited financial and personnel resources.

With the alternative choice of having fewer trees and trees with increased potential for failure; my vote will be for the ginkgo every time. Rather than stopping planting ginkgoes we need to be more diligent about where we plant them and to avoid the use of monocultures of ginkgo or any other species.

Rather than avoiding the use of ginkgo in the urban environment we should be reserving it for use in areas where we cannot tolerate diseases, insects, and the wildlife that are attracted to these food sources. It is more of a street tree than a park tree; a species for poor growing conditions where most of our beautiful and environmentally natives are unable to thrive.

Your comments about my "simplistic statements" are a perfect illustration of what is wrong with industrial horticulture. I will have a column soon about the difference between urban forestry and horticulture.

Suffice it to say for now that forestry strives to increase biodiversity, while horticulture strives to decrease it. We can look at the many tales of woe that industrial horticulture has visited on our cities: — Endless duplication of a small number of clones, so that, rather than having thousands of genotypes from planting seedlings, we have a huge number of copies of few genotypes. The devastation of Dutch elm disease in cities with too many elms should have taught us the benefits of diversity, but instead, cities repeated the same mistakes over and over — pin oak being just one example.

There is an old comedy routine where a man is asked if he has learned from his mistakes and he replies "I have learned from my mistakes and believe I can repeat them exactly. You say that we should plant more ginkgo because the urban environment is inhospitable to other species. The answer is to make our planting sites more hospitable. You praise the virtue of ginkgo for having no insect pests, but in fact it has no insects period. I encourage you and your horticulture colleagues to pay head to Doug Tallamy's fine book Bringing Nature Home.

Instead of making our cities less diverse and less hospitable to wildlife, we should be inviting wildlife, including insects, into our cities by planting appropriate trees.

An oak whether native or not can host up to species of insects, and therefore attract birds and small mammals. A ginkgo is a biological desert that happens to provide some shade. If we stop planting ginkgo trees, or greatly reduce the frequency with which we plant them, there will still be plenty of them because of our current overplanting.

Rather than avoiding natives because it is inconvenient to find a niche for them, we should use the urban landscape to make conditions more hospitable to beneficial trees. This article is spot on. Any ginkgoes are too many in North America. If you want a plastic tree instead then plant one of those. You honestly think gingko trees are over-planted in Lexington? If you are referring to the relatively young gingko trees planted in downtown Lexington…. I too believe diversity is the key, but I feel we have room for a quite a few more hundred gingko trees in our beautiful city…I personally pray that many of them survive to maturity, better yet, old age.

Kimmerer is saying. Ginkgos, lovely though they may be, are not conducive to a healthy biome in this part of the world. Troy, thank you for your comment. The city has planted several hundred ginkgo trees. That makes this area essentially a biological desert, inhospitable to lepidopterans moths and butterflies and other insects, and also for birds. The more we create such low-diversity areas within our cities, the more the total biodiversity of the city declines.

So it is not really a question of the total number of ginkgo trees in the city, but of their distribution. By the way, you may want to check your spelling — it is ginkgo. I am no expert, but I tend to agree with Bill. I am aware of a considerable number of ginkgo trees in the Ashland Park area 1 street, in particular going back over 75 years. Now I admit, I do not claim to know what trees have been planted in downtown in recent years in areas of rebuilding.

But if there has been a resurgence of the gingko in recent years, I say, good! If you live in the Chevy Chase area, you must be aware of all the pin oaks! Many homeowners replaced these over the years with red maples and sugar maples. There were also a lot of locust trees around the same time. Then there was the trend of planting flowering crabs and other flowering trees, plums and, of course, the Bradford pears— so desirable for awhile for there shape and blossoms— until they started splitting!

Another unfortunate trend was planting magnolia trees, also spruce trees, right up against houses with no allowance for root growth. But I digress… Mainly I wanted to point out that I feel the pin-oaks and maples have been used much more than the gingko, and many are currently struggling. I know in my area, we are currently needing to replace some of our trees. It would be helpful if, rather than merely criticize the gingko, you could make suggestions of suitable replacements on your opinion.

Your suggestions are most welcome! However, I think you somewhat miss the point of the article. The problem with ginkgo is that, as a non-native tree in a genus unrelated to any North American trees, it is not hospitable to all the organisms that live on and in trees and thereby increase biodiversity in our urban forest.

All the other trees you mention, regardless of their other failings, are of native species and genera, and therefore can support thousands of species that live on and in them.

Even callery pear also called Bradford , while not native to North America, is in a native genus, Pyrus. The choice of replacement trees depends very much on site conditions. You would not want to put a bur oak between the street and sidewalk because it will be too big. The first Ginkgo biloba in the parks was transplanted to Boston Common near the Joy Street steps in Already 40 feet tall at the time, that tree was moved to the Common from the nearby estate of Mrs. Gardiner Greene, daughter of John Singleton Copley.

The male tree produces small, cone-like structures that hold pollen. When female trees are about 25 years old, they produce small fruits with a fleshy, apricot-colored skin around the nut inside.