Crane shares with us a potent insight: “Encounters with trees punctuate the chapters of my life.” He is a terrific writer, erudite and honest, without a trace of arrogance, and immanently readable.
In 277 pages and 37 chapters (most can be read in one sitting), Ginkgo alternates between main character and background thread in a story that begins and ends with an appreciation for trees.
The book opens with Goethe’s poem about the leaf of ginkgo and we recognize his questions as our own.Ĭrane has structured the book to be accessible and technical, grounded in hard science but presented in the context of human history, culture, and botanical mystery. Among its delightful nuggets are ginkgo’s connections to Puccini’s opera Madama Butterfly, to Marie Stopes who leads the British movement for family planning and the revolution in women’s rights, and to the Dutch East India Company. The book is a personal and compelling account of the species, its life history, evolution, cultural importance, historical context, value as a food and medicinal plant, and certified “rock star” status as the world’s oldest extant species of seed plant. Now comes Peter Crane’s “biography” of Ginkgo biloba, a labor of 10 years representing a lifetime of fascination and scholarship. Above all, I wanted to know more about its life history. Ginkgo: The Tree That Time Forgot, by Peter Crane, Yale University Press (March 19, 2013) 408pp, 61 b/w illustrations, hardcover publisher’s price: $40.00, Amazon price: $26.17.īorn and raised in the desert and transplanted to Virginia, I remember vividly my first encounter more than 30 years ago with a ginkgo: I was enraptured by the form, texture, venation, and color of the leaf, puzzled by tree’s odd growth form, and at once curious and repulsed by the putrid smelling nuts.
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