Review by Choice Review
The ginkgo is perhaps one of the most widely planted trees in much of the Northern Hemisphere. It is known for its graceful form and its tough resilience in the face of air pollution and disease. Most people know that it is somehow exotic in its Asian origin or in its malodorous seeds. Its status as the single species of a single genus, family, and phylum is a hint of the ancient origins of Ginkgo biloba. Crane (Yale Univ.; formerly, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK), a paleobotanist with much field experience, sets this plant in a geological, geographical, and social context with insights into its discovery, particular growth forms, mode of reproduction, and economic uses. Crane takes readers on journeys of discovery in botanical gardens, fossil deposits, and Asian temples and forests to sew together a picture of this living fossil tree. His account is scientific and at the same time personal since he writes with authority about the ginkgos he has seen over many years. Along the way, one learns a good bit about plant biology and plant distribution. The book is well documented and draws on much of the technical literature in plant science. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Academic and general readers, all levels. D. H. Pfister Harvard University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Crane (School of Forestry and Environmental Studies/Yale Univ.) shares his fascination with the ginkgo tree. During his tenure as the director of the Royal Botanical Gardens in Kew, the author lived on the property. An iconic ginkgo that grew next to his house was the oldest in the U.K. and was a magnet for dignitaries and tourists. This 200-million-year-old species has proven to be remarkably resilient. It survived the extinction event that eliminated the dinosaur population and flourished in the Northern Hemisphere up until the Great Ice Age, when it maintained a foothold in China, from which it gradually spread to Korea and Japan. Buddhists considered it to be a sacred tree. As Asia was opened to the West, the tree was brought back to Europe, where it now adorns city streets, and then to North America. It has been determined experimentally that ginkgos mainly reproduce sexually, with a "rigid separate sex system," but they occasionally exhibit bisexual behavior. Paleobotanists and geneticists have determined the species' approximate age but are still working on its degree of kinship to modern vegetation such as conifers and flowering plants, as well as how it "fits into the broader constellation of living and extinct plant diversity." The tree, called the "Holy One of the East" by Chiang Kai-shek, was a symbol of Chinese nationalism in the fight against communism. An entertaining introduction to botanical lore.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
