Article

Happy New Year from the Immortal Ginkgo

An inspirational creature card with a message of ‘fortitude, endurance, and badassness.’

By Bridget Lyons

Editor’s note: A couple weeks ago I received an email from Bridget Lyons, one of our favorite writers, with this message: “I make little art cards every year depicting an inspirational creature who I think possesses qualities we all need in the upcoming year, and I'd like to send you one.” It arrived yesterday, and we are happy to be able to share it with you today. Happy New Year.

December 31, 2024—This year, I am celebrating the ginkgo tree, an amazing creature known for its distinctive fan shaped leaves (depicted on this card, thanks to a photographic process known as cyanotype printing). These leaves turn a beautiful shade of gold in the fall.

In addition to their striking appearance, ginkgos have an astonishing history. They’re often called “living fossils“ because they’ve been around for 200 million years. They coexisted with dinosaurs and survived their extinction. Botanists assign ginkgos to their own class, order, family, and genus, and there’s only one species left in all these categories: Ginkgo biloba. All the modern tree’s other relatives disappeared from the fossil record about 2 million years ago. Ginkgo biloba itself almost vanished too; central China is the only place on earth where it still grows in the wild.

However, because our species took a liking to ginkgos, we’ve managed to bring them back to North America, South America, and Europe, where they make hardy street trees. They tolerate cold weather, snow, and wind; they have deep roots; and they are disease-, insect-, and fungus-resistant. A recent study of 700-year old ginkgos showed that not only were the ancient trees still growing, but they also showed no chemical signs of aging. There are trees in China with 19-foot diameter trunks, and there were records of 3500 year old individuals. In short, the ginkgo is a hard-core survivor—a botanical badass.

One of the most remarkable examples of this badassness can be found in Hiroshima, Japan, where six trees survived the 1945 atom bomb detonation. All six are located within a half mile of the impact zone. These hibakujumoku (“trees that survived the blast“) are still alive today.

It’s probably obvious why I chose the ginkgo for my card this year: We’ve got some hard times ahead, both in the short term/human/political sense and in the longer term/all living things/environmental sense. We are going to need to dig in, play the long game, and recruit all available resources to both support other members of our own species and fight to preserve the lives of the species we share the planet with. Not an easy endeavor—but look at what the ginkgo has endured! And the trees have been making and sharing beauty the whole time.

May these lovely leaves and the story behind them grant you fortitude, endurance, and badassness this year.

If you like finding inspiration in the stories of non-human species, you might enjoy my book Entwined: Dispatches from the Intersections of Species (Texas A&M Press), which is coming out in June! I’ll send more info along closer to its publication date.

Bridget Lyons is a writer and editor living in Santa Cruz. To learn more about her work and explorations, visit www.bridgetalyons.com.

Category: