Ginkgo biloba L. — Common ginkgo

Introduction

Ginkgo biloba L., commonly called ginkgo or the maidenhair-tree, is a large deciduous woody tree and the only living species of Ginkgo L. It is also the sole surviving representative of Ginkgoaceae Engl. and Ginkgoales Gorozh. Carl Linnaeus published the species in October 1771 in Mantissa Plantarum Altera, page 313 (International Plant Names Index 2026).

The tree develops a substantial trunk, deeply fissured bark, and a branching crown through true secondary growth. Long shoots extend the branches and bear more widely separated leaves, while compact short shoots commonly bear clustered leaves and reproductive structures. The leaves are simple, long-petiolate, and usually fan-shaped. Their veins repeatedly divide into two and ordinarily remain open rather than forming a dense network (Lin et al. 2022).

The epithet biloba refers to the frequently two-lobed blade, but individual leaves may be entire, shallowly notched, distinctly bilobed, or divided more deeply. Leaves on vigorous long shoots are often more strongly divided than those on short shoots. Autumn foliage commonly turns clear yellow to golden before falling.

Most individuals are dioecious, meaning that pollen- and ovule-bearing reproductive structures occur on separate trees. Pollen-bearing trees produce slender, catkin-like structures on short shoots. Ovule-bearing trees produce exposed ovules near the ends of stalks. The mature structure commonly called a ginkgo fruit is botanically a seed: its soft outer sarcotesta surrounds a hard sclerotesta and the tissues within it. Ginkgo biloba produces neither flowers nor true fruits.

Fertilization is especially distinctive. The pollen tube develops within the ovule and initially has a substantial nutritive or haustorial role. Large, multiciliate sperm later swim a short distance through fluid to reach the egg. Among living seed plants, motile sperm persist only in ginkgo and cycads (Lin et al. 2022; Liu et al. 2022).

Numerous varieties and forms have been published historically for divided leaves, variegation, narrow crowns, pendulous branches, and other traits, but these are treated as cultivars rather than accepted wild subspecies or botanical varieties (Plants of the World Online 2026). Although ginkgo is not a conifer, hobbyists have embraced the collection of dwarf and unusual ginkgo cultivars in a similar fashion to dwarf conifers, with which they are often listed in the trade.

The natural range is difficult to reconstruct because people have protected, cultivated, and transported ginkgo trees for centuries. Plants of the World Online recognizes the species as native to Zhejiang in southeastern China. Ecological and genomic research supports a more complex history involving differentiated relict or refugial components elsewhere in China, including southwestern China and the Sichuan Basin (Tang et al. 2012; Zhao et al. 2019; Nie et al. 2025).

Despite global abundance in cultivation, Ginkgo biloba is assessed as Endangered in the wild. Ornamental trees protect the species from immediate global disappearance, but they do not necessarily preserve the provenance, genetic structure, natural regeneration, or ecological relationships of relict populations (Forest et al. 2018; Plants of the World Online 2026).

Horticultural and Agricultural Uses

Ginkgo biloba is widely planted as a street tree, shade tree, specimen, memorial tree, campus tree, cemetery tree, and historic landscape plant. Its popularity reflects its distinctive foliage, golden autumn color, longevity, architectural character, and tolerance of many urban conditions.

Numerous cultivars have been selected for columnar, narrow, spreading, compact, dwarf, pendulous, or variegated growth. Clonal propagation preserves the crown form, growth rate, foliage, and known sex of named cultivars.

Pollen-bearing cultivars are frequently selected for sidewalks, parking areas, and other paved public spaces because they do not produce seeds with soft, strongly unpleasant-smelling outer coats. Ovule-bearing trees remain important for reproduction, conservation, botanical collections, cultural landscapes, breeding, and edible-seed production. The preference for pollen-bearing street trees should not be mistaken for a biological judgment that ovule-bearing trees are undesirable in every setting.

The species generally performs best in full sun and in deep, adequately moist but well-drained soils. Young trees benefit from dependable water during establishment and sufficient rooting volume. Established trees can tolerate drought, heat, cold, urban air pollution, and moderate salinity, although performance depends on local climate, soil, and management (Lin et al. 2022).

Experimental work confirms that ginkgo is resilient but not universally stress-proof. Matsuura et al. (2026) found comparatively limited photosynthetic decline under air-pollution and moderate salinity treatments, while prolonged excess humidity disrupted leaf internal structure and reduced photosynthetic performance. Good drainage and soil aeration therefore remain important even for a tree renowned for urban toughness.

Mukherjee et al. (2026) proposed the Pigment Integrity-to-Dust Ratio (PIDR) as a bioindicator integrating photosynthetic-pigment condition with foliar dust accumulation in urban Ginkgo biloba. The index offers a potentially useful way to compare pollution stress across sites and seasons. Because it is newly proposed, its reliability should be evaluated across additional cities, climates, pollution mixtures, and tree populations before it is treated as a general monitoring standard.

Ginkgo can be propagated by seed, cuttings, grafting, and tissue-culture methods. Seedlings preserve the benefits of genetic recombination through sexual reproduction and are valuable for conservation, rootstock production, and breeding, but they are genetically variable and cannot ordinarily be sexed reliably from juvenile external morphology. Grafting and other clonal, asexual methods are used to propagate named ornamental cultivars and agricultural selections.

Edible seeds

The prepared seed kernel, commonly sold as a ginkgo nut, has a long culinary history in East Asia. The soft sarcotesta is removed, and the kernel is accessed through the hard sclerotesta. The structure is a seed rather than a nut in the strict botanical sense.

Gu et al. (2026) quantified scaling relationships among dimensions, shape, volume, fresh mass, and internal contents of ginkgo sclerotestas. The work provides a morphometric basis for studying seed construction, resource allocation, and potentially the grading or comparison of cultivated seed material.

Fresh, raw, or excessive ginkgo seeds can be toxic, and serious adverse effects have occurred after consumption of seeds or crude plant material. Culinary tradition does not imply that unlimited consumption is safe. The sarcotesta can also irritate susceptible skin during collection and processing (Liu et al. 2022; National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health 2025).

Leaf production and phytochemistry

Ginkgo leaves are harvested for standardized extracts and dietary supplements. Their chemical composition varies with genotype, age, season, site, cultivation, harvest timing, processing, and extraction method.

Šamec et al. (2026) measured five biflavonoids in leaves collected from 90 cultivated trees. Sciadopitysin was the most abundant compound measured, followed by isoginkgetin, ginkgetin, bilobetin, and amentoflavone. Total biflavonoid accumulation varied substantially among trees and tended to decline after the 10–30-year age class, while location and sex had more compound-specific and nonlinear effects. The study demonstrates that tree age and environmental context should be considered when selecting leaf material or comparing phytochemical results.

Commercial ginkgo products are promoted for memory, dementia, tinnitus, circulation, anxiety, and other conditions. Current guidance from the U.S. National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health concludes that there is no conclusive evidence that ginkgo is effective for any health condition. Evidence for some dementia symptoms is inconsistent, and ginkgo has not been shown to prevent or slow dementia. Products may interact with medications, including anticoagulants, and should not be treated as interchangeable with the living plant or with one another (National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health 2025).

Cultural and scientific uses

Ginkgo has been cultivated for centuries in East Asian temple grounds, gardens, settlements, and cultural landscapes. Ancient trees are associated with longevity, resilience, remembrance, scholarship, and continuity (Crane 2019).

The species is also important in research on plant longevity, sex determination, large-genome biology, gymnosperm phylogeny, pollen-tube development, motile sperm, urban stress, phytochemistry, and population history.

Conservation Concerns

Ginkgo biloba is assessed as Endangered even though it is widely cultivated. The assessment concerns the restricted and uncertain natural lineage, not the total number of planted trees. The species ranks first in evolutionary distinctiveness and second on the cited gymnosperm EDGE list because no close living relative shares its long independent phylogenetic branch (Forest et al. 2018; Plants of the World Online 2026).

The distinction between wild, anciently cultivated, and recently planted populations is often difficult. Temple trees, village trees, seed orchards, protected individuals, and centuries of movement have altered the distribution. Ancient cultivated populations may still possess major genetic and cultural value, but their provenance should not be assumed without supporting evidence.

Evidence from the Dalou Mountains of southwestern China supports the persistence of fragments of the species’ original natural range in valley and lower-slope habitats, while also documenting the influence of agriculture, settlement, and forest fragmentation. Tang et al. (2012) reached this conclusion by integrating vegetation, habitat, population structure, historical information, and cultural evidence.

Population-genomic evidence reveals an even more complex history. By resequencing 545 genomes from 51 populations, Zhao et al. (2019) identified several ancient genetic components, three principal refugial regions in China, repeated population expansion and contraction, admixture among relict populations, and human-mediated dispersal to other regions and continents. Conservation based only on common ornamental clones would therefore fail to represent much of the species’ evolutionary and genetic structure.

Maternal plastome evidence adds another dimension to this population history. An analysis of 227 complete plastomes, including 81 newly sampled trees from the Sichuan Basin, recovered three maternal lineages that differed from the nuclear-genome pattern (Nie et al. 2025). Western Sichuan Basin populations had comparatively high haplotype diversity and included a newly documented haplotype related to rare refugial lineages, supporting the basin as both a refugial area and a corridor for population expansion.

Nuclear and plastid results are complementary. Nuclear genomes reflect inheritance through both parents, while plastomes chiefly trace maternal history. Conservation planning should represent differentiated populations and should not rely on one genetic marker system alone.

Priority actions include:

Protecting relict and naturally regenerating populations in situ;
Conserving surrounding forest habitat and ecological processes;
Recording whether trees are wild, anciently cultivated, or recently planted;
Representing multiple nuclear and maternal lineages;
Maintaining both pollen- and ovule-bearing trees;
Documenting provenance in botanical gardens and arboreta;
Avoiding excessive dependence on a small number of cultivars; and
Supporting recruitment rather than conserving only isolated ancient individuals.

Ex situ conservation is unusually extensive due to the species’ abundance in cultivation. Botanical gardens, arboreta, temple grounds, historic landscapes, municipal forests, seed orchards, and private collections maintain large numbers of trees. These collections make their greatest contribution when they are genetically representative, accurately documented, and coordinated with protection of source populations.

A street planted entirely with one cloned pollen-bearing cultivar preserves Ginkgo biloba as an ornamental but contributes far less to evolutionary conservation than a provenance-based collection representing multiple lineages and both sexes.

No modern extinction is recorded for Ginkgo. The timing of the loss of the last distinct congener cannot be stated precisely because the long-ranging Cenozoic fossil Ginkgo adiantoides is morphologically indistinguishable from G. biloba and has sometimes been treated as conspecific. Fossil Ginkgo disappeared from Europe by about 2.5 million years ago, while the youngest known records are late Pliocene to Pleistocene occurrences in Japan (Royer et al. 2003; Hohmann et al. 2018). Extinction of G. biloba would therefore eliminate an entire major branch of seed-plant evolution from the tree of life.

Additional Information

iNaturalist: Ginkgo biloba (https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/64350-Ginkgo-biloba (opens in a new tab)) — Photographs and observation records; most observations outside China are cultivated.
Trees and Shrubs Online: Ginkgo biloba (https://www.treesandshrubsonline.org/articles/ginkgo/ginkgo-biloba/ (opens in a new tab)) — Detailed dendrological, cultivar, historical, and horticultural treatment.
Plants of the World Online: Ginkgo biloba L. (https://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:262125-1 (opens in a new tab)) — Accepted name, synonyms, distribution, classification, uses, and conservation information.
International Plant Names Index: Ginkgo biloba L. (https://www.ipni.org/n/262125-1 (opens in a new tab)) — Nomenclatural record for the 1771 name.
World Flora Online: Ginkgo biloba L. (https://www.worldfloraonline.org/taxon/wfo-0000795526 (opens in a new tab)) — Accepted species record and classification.
Flora of China: Ginkgo biloba (https://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=2&taxon_id=200005235 (opens in a new tab)) — Chinese regional description and distribution.
Flora of North America: Ginkgo biloba (https://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=1&taxon_id=200005235 (opens in a new tab)) — North American treatment of the cultivated species.
GBIF: Ginkgo biloba L. (https://www.gbif.org/species/2687885 (opens in a new tab)) — Global occurrence data; cultivated records should not be interpreted as native distribution.
National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health: Ginkgo (https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/ginkgo (opens in a new tab)) — Current evidence and safety guidance concerning ginkgo products and seeds.

References and Further Reading

Crane PR (2019) An evolutionary and cultural biography of ginkgo. Plants, People, Planet 1(1): 32–37. https://doi.org/10.1002/ppp3.7 (opens in a new tab)

Forest F, Moat J, Baloch E, Brummitt NA, Bachman SP, Ickert-Bond S, Hollingsworth PM, Liston A, Little DP, Mathews S, et al. (2018) Gymnosperms on the EDGE. Scientific Reports 8: 6053. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-24365-4 (opens in a new tab)

Gu W, Niklas KJ, Gielis J, He H, Jiang F, Zhang W, Shi P (2026) Scaling analyses and morphometrics of Ginkgo biloba seeds. Botany Letters 173(1): 60–71. https://doi.org/10.1080/23818107.2025.2582477 (opens in a new tab)

Hohmann N, Wolf EM, Rigault P, Zhou W, Kiefer M, Zhao Y, Fu CX, Koch MA (2018) Ginkgo biloba’s footprint of dynamic Pleistocene history dates back only 390,000 years ago. BMC Genomics 19: 299. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12864-018-4673-2 (opens in a new tab)

International Plant Names Index (2026) Ginkgo biloba L. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; Harvard University Herbaria & Libraries; Australian National Herbarium. https://www.ipni.org/n/262125-1 (opens in a new tab)

Lin HY, Li WH, Lin CF, Wu HR, Zhao YP (2022) International biological flora: Ginkgo biloba. Journal of Ecology 110(4): 951–982. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.13856 (opens in a new tab)

Liu Y, Xin H, Zhang Y, Che F, Shen N, Cui Y (2022) Leaves, seeds and exocarp of Ginkgo biloba L. (Ginkgoaceae): A comprehensive review of traditional uses, phytochemistry, pharmacology, resource utilization and toxicity. Journal of Ethnopharmacology 298: 115645. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jep.2022.115645 (opens in a new tab)

Liu Y, Wang S, Li L, Yang T, Dong S, Wei T, Wu S, Liu Y, Gong Y, Feng X, et al. (2022) The Cycas genome and the early evolution of seed plants. Nature Plants 8(4): 389–401. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-022-01129-7 (opens in a new tab)

Matsuura T, Okugawa S, Yamakita E, Kiyomizu T, Tsutsui Y, Kume A, Hanba YT (2026) Evaluation of the photosynthetic response of Ginkgo biloba as an urban tree to air pollution, soil salinity, and excess humidity. Frontiers in Plant Science 17: 1746328. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2026.1746328 (opens in a new tab)

Mukherjee S, Bibi D, Sipos B, Abriha-Molnár VÉ, Orlóci L, Kisvarga S, Horotán K, Istvánfi Z, Oláh V, Tóthmérész B, et al. (2026) Pigment Integrity-to-Dust Ratio (PIDR): A novel bioindicator for assessing urban air pollution stress in Ginkgo biloba. Plants 15(12): 1893. https://doi.org/10.3390/plants15121893 (opens in a new tab)

National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (2025) Ginkgo: Usefulness and safety. National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland. https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/ginkgo (opens in a new tab)

Nie L, Liu F, Wang M, Jiang Z, Kong J, Tembrock LR, Kan S, Wang P, Wang J, Wu Z, et al. (2025) Plastome data provides new insights into population differentiation and evolution of ginkgo in the Sichuan Basin of China. BMC Plant Biology 25: 48. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12870-024-05977-7 (opens in a new tab)

Plants of the World Online (2026) Ginkgo biloba L. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. https://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:262125-1 (opens in a new tab)

Royer DL, Hickey LJ, Wing SL (2003) Ecological conservatism in the “living fossil” Ginkgo. Paleobiology 29(1): 84–104. https://doi.org/10.1666/0094-8373(2003)029%3C0084:ECITLF%3E2.0.CO;2 (opens in a new tab)

Šamec D, Medvedec B, Jurčević Šangut I, Jurinjak Tušek A (2026) Patterns of biflavonoid accumulation in ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba L.) leaves from 90 trees and their variation with age, gender, and location. Plants 15(11): 1724. https://doi.org/10.3390/plants15111724 (opens in a new tab)

Tang CQ, Yang Y, Ohsawa M, Yi SR, Momohara A, Su WH, Wang HC, Zhang ZY, Peng MC, Wu ZL (2012) Evidence for the persistence of wild Ginkgo biloba (Ginkgoaceae) populations in the Dalou Mountains, southwestern China. American Journal of Botany 99(8): 1408–1414. https://doi.org/10.3732/ajb.1200168 (opens in a new tab)

Zhao YP, Fan G, Yin PP, Sun S, Li N, Hong X, Hu G, Zhang H, Zhang FM, Han JD, et al. (2019) Resequencing 545 ginkgo genomes across the world reveals the evolutionary history of the living fossil. Nature Communications 10: 4201. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-12133-5 (opens in a new tab)