Ginkgo folklore from Japan - 1274

On Daimoku's blog you can read a nice story from 1274 about a dog, a Ginkgo tree and Jotakuji temple in Japan. Some story lines:
"Jotakuji is famed as a Ginkgo temple. It’s located about 5.5 miles north east from Minobusan. It was originally an ashram for Shingon (esoteric Buddhism)......The stick started having its roots again and the tree has become a big tree as we can see today. "
Read full story here.

Queen plants Ginkgo at Kew, UK

Britain's royal couple celebrated the 250th anniversary of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew on Tuesday, May 5th, planting trees much as they did a half-century ago. Dressed in a pink coat and matching hat, the 82-year-old queen wielded a shovel, heaving dirt at the base of a newly planted Ginkgo tree, while Tony Kirkham, the head of the Arboretum, looked on.
Read more here.

Updates of my homepage The Ginkgo Pages

* New topic: Queen plants Ginkgo tree at Kew, London, UK.

Video: Ginkgo ovules / seeds

Spring 2009: Ovules (seeds) on male Ginkgo tree with female branch. This tree was planted in 1785 from seed taken from Deshima by Carl-Peter Thunberg. I made this video in Hortus Botanicus Leiden - the Netherlands. April 25th, 2009.
More info on my website The Ginkgo Pages: http://www.xs4all.nl/~kwanten/
Click on HQ for better quality.