This past weekend I traveled with several photographers to the large grove of ginkgo trees (Ginkgo biloba) at Blandy Experimental Farm of the State Arboretum of Virginia in Boyce, VA. It was a beautiful autumn day and lots of other people also decided to check out the bright yellow foliage, which made it quite challenging to capture images that were not full of posing people. As the final photo shows, I too was posing for my own version of a selfie.
I have visited this grove of gingko trees several times over the last seven years and never fail to be amazed by the exotic beauty of the ginkgos. The grove, one of the largest outside of the trees’ native China, was established in 1929 when Dr. Orlando White decided to do an experiment. He hypothesized that the sex ratio of the 600 seeds that he planted from a single ginkgo tree would be 1:1. He did not live long enough to find out if he was right, but of the 301 trees that survived to maturity and for which gender could be determined, 157 were female and 144 were male.
For more information about the ginkgo grove, check out my blog posting from 2013 entitled “Journey to a ginkgo grove” or this brochure on the ginkgo grove put out by the Blandy Experimental Farm. In the brochure you can learn some cool things about ginkgo trees, including the amazing fact that the earliest ginkgo leaf fossils date from 270 million years ago.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 
Great photos, Mike. I like the selfie-shadow
Thanks, Dan. I think that you and I prefer this style of selfie to the more popular facial shot. I would have preferred to have a canine companion in the shot, but, alas, I have no dog at present. 🙂
Correct, I do like shadow selfies 🙂
Beautiful photos of the trees. I love ❤ the selfie!!
Great images Mike! Enjoyed seeing them. Also interesting info to go with the images!
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Your last shot (selfie) looks like a giant squirrel!
Gingko’s fall color is so luminous, I imagine that grove is pretty amazing. After last week’s snow, I noticed that beneath some street trees I saw all the leaves had fallen at once to create bright yellow, mounded blankets.
What a remarkable place! All the yellow is absolutely beautiful! We sure live in a land with so much beauty! It’s everywhere!
What a great project, these trees are living fossils….
Isn’t that fun? Blandy is a beautiful place where we enjoy riding our horses. It’s 1/2 hour from our farm! The ginko’s are beautiful! Like the selfie!
I’ve never seen an older tree like these but we have a few young ones in town. They’re interesting trees!
Ginkgos are very special. We have a number of them in one of our favorite parks here, and it’s good to see them in autumn again. Thanks for this.
BEAUTIFUL!
What a beautiful place to visit, Mike ….. especially in autumn. Love the photos … and the shadow made me smile 🙂
Thanks, Pete. Despite the crowds, I was able to enjoy the beauty of the gingko trees by moving all the way to the end of the grove. As is often the case with popular locations, people tended to congregate near the entrance.
Our town planted a couple of Ginko’s along one of our neighborhood streets and one in the circle at the end of ours. I enjoy not just the color but the unusual fanning vein pattern of the leaves. One can sense the glow from that grove.
I too love the ginkgo leaves, Steve. My favorite individual gingko tree was probably the one that I saw at a botanical garden in Paris last November that had been planted in 1895 (https://michaelqpowell.com/2019/11/22/young-male-gingko-tree-in-paris/). It was probably a male tree, because I did not notice any of the gingko fruits that are squishy and nasty-smelling.
Gingko trees, I love them, they’re so exotic. And how lovely to see an entire grove of them. I enjoyed this series of photos, Mike, thank you.
Thanks, Jet. As I mentioned to someone else, my favorite may well be the one that I saw last November at a botanical garden in Paris. It was planted in 1895 and the French consider it to be a “young male” gingko tree. (https://michaelqpowell.com/2019/11/22/young-male-gingko-tree-in-paris/)
Ginkgo trees are beautiful. Their form, colour, the interesting shape of the leaves do make these a fascinating and as you say exotic tree… and seeing them in a grove… wow.
It is interesting to note, Chris, that you mentioned the shape of the ginkgo leaves. I took some closer shots of the leaves that I am considering including in another post about the ginkgo trees.