Hello All, I have a tree in front of my house to that bears this small, round, organgey fruit that smells to high heaven. They contain seeds and have a very acidic, vomit smell. It really is bad. They come down EVERY fall and make a huge mess for myself and my neighbors. I was told once that the type of fruit starts with a "c". I really love the tree and I so want to keep it, it is beautiful in the spring and summer but I HAVE to stop it from bearing this smelly fruit. Please give me some advice, I can't go through another fall of these small orange fruits. Thanks in advance!
Any Chinese or Japanese people living near you? - if yes, invite them round to collect the fruit as soon as they fall. Ginkgo seeds (the nut inside the smelly pulp) are highly valued in eastern Asian cuisine.
Its only the female Ginkgo that produces these fruits. I heard that they are banned from growing the female form in Switzerland because of the smell. Is there an easy way to distinguish between the male and female so that if the tree had to come down, it would be easily replaced with an equally ornamental male tree?
You can't tell until a seedling reaches flowering age. A grafted named clonal cultivar of known (male) gender will not produce fruits unless misidentified.
You may be able to keep it from fruiting by spraying it with Florel. It is used to keep Olives, Liquidambers, and other trees from fruiting. You spray the tree when the flowers are open and it aborts the fruit. I don't know if it is labled for Ginkgo. The Monterey Lawn and Garden Products company is the supplier. http://www.montereylawngarden.com/info/florel/ Good luck!
MD. they are male and female trees so a male is needed. most nursery plants are selected to be males in order to avoid the fruits so, there are probably lots more males in the landscape than females. hard to eliminate the pollen source.
Did anyone ever try Florel to spray the flowers of a female gingko tree to keep it from producing fruit? Does it work? We discovered just today that our gingko that we planted nearly 25 years ago has fruit! We thought we had a male tree! We'll harvest our unripened fruit from the tree this year, before it ripens and smells foul. We'd hate to lose 25 years of growth on a tree, after finally discovering its gender. That's a good part of one's lifetime. We've enjoyed the tree so much. The leaves turning yellow and dropping all in one day are neat. But stinky fruit is NOT neat !!! Arrrrgh!! So, can one tell from a young gingko tree if it is truly male? If so, where does one look for the genitalia (LOL)? —DM Pearson p.s. Bought this from a reputable nursery. Needless to say, that receipt is long gone!
The only way to tell is to wait to see what it produces. I've not even heard of any genetic tests for Ginkgo sex (no doubt because they're too expensive to develop, rather than actually impossible). Never heard of it applying to Ginkgo, but some other dioecious trees can change sex with time, or on different branches, so it's not totally impossible yours might have been male when planted, but had a sex change.
Great! I've got maybe a 30 - 35 year old possibly once male tree that's now female. Where did we go wrong? (Head buried in hands). I thought we brought it up right. Might this tree have caught something from the human population? —DM Pearson "Father" of Gingko Tree in Drag! er, one that had a 'sex change'! When would this have occurred? On the Vernal equinox? Obviously, we failed to nip something in the bud!
Ginkgo 'Autumn Gold' is sold as a male cultivar, haven't heard of them changing gender. Heard of a family in China that has cared for one female Ginkgo for hundreds of years, the nuts provide them with a livelihood.
Boy, I hate to lose a tree we've spent our lives with! I'm going to try to see if anything is effective and at all convenient to use to prevent the onset of fruit. But, if that fails, we will have to cut it down, rip the roots (with my heart) out, and replant it with a MALE gingko, such as 'Autumn Gold' or one of the other 'male' varieties I've also read about just tonight. I appreciate your response.
They are used as city street trees some places and seem to remember hearing they were sprayed with something to either deter fruit set or mask the smell. Must have quite an odour. Some info here www.xs4all.nl/~kwanten/
One interesting point . . . soak some Ginkgo fruit in alcohol for a long time, and they get to smell very nice. The butanoic acid (what makes them smell nasty) combines with the alcohol to give ethyl butanoate (smells of apples / pineapples).
How long does it take for a Ginko to reach the size of the one in the photograph please? How many years before they fruit if they are female? Then again that may not be a problem around here as the cockatoos and parots will probably knock them off before they are ripe :) I have been holding 2 Ginkos in pots waiting for a good wet winter to plant them out down my paddock line. Liz
