Grass trees and ginkgo.

A few days ago I received a grafted year-old Ginkgo biloba 'Mayfield' from Kigi Nursery. This happened to coincide with one of Colorado's late-Spring cold spells, so I simply potted the little tree up. Besides, the ginkgo hasn't broken dormancy yet, so forcing it to wait for warmer weather shouldn't really be an issue. For those unfamiliar with this particular cultivar of ginkgo, 'Mayfield' is an upright columnar form, and it is probably the narrowest in cultivation. Introduced from Ohio in the 1940's, Ginkgo biloba 'Mayfield' is not as well known as 'Princeton Sentry', but it is the perfect specimen tree for our small, commensurately narrow yard.

Ginkgo, of course, is precisely the sort of tree one would expect to find in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "Maple White Land" from The Lost World. It is a survivor, a relic from the early Jurassic; other ginkgo-like fossils date to an even earlier era. Ginkgo biloba was discovered by naturalist Engelbert Kaempfer in China, as so many of our "living fossils" have been, in 1691; over 400 years later, this sole-surviving ginkgo species now has a cosmopolitan dispersal as an ornamental tree with an ancient lineage. Botanist Peter Crane has written an excellent, comprehensive natural history of the ginkgo tree in Ginkgo: The Tree That Time Forgot (Yale University Press, copyright 2013). If you're interested in the story of this incredible survivor, then this is the book for you.

Just a couple days ago, after almost two months, the first Xanthorrhoea australis seedlings poked their pointy leaves out of the soil. As of this moment, six of the eight seeds appear to have germinated, which is a better ratio than I anticipated. Actually, I had started to wonder if the seeds were viable, or if I'd used an appropriate soil blend in which to germinate them. I guess I should have known that some seeds just take longer to germinate. As their name implies, these seedlings look for all the world like a tiny sprout of grass...perhaps with blades a bit more stiff and thick, but grass nonetheless. It will take as long as twenty years before Xanthorrhoea australis develops its characteristic trunk. I will try to post a picture of the seedlings in the near future. But, as I tell myself, this is what these will look like one day:

Xanthorrhoea australis. Photo courtesy of Australian Seed.

I borrowed this photograph from Australian Seed. They do ship internationally, according to their website, so if you can't source this amazing plant domestically, perhaps give them a try. It looks like Australian Seed carries the seeds of many other native (and unusual) Australian plants, so keep them in mind for these as well (I know I will). And, while the Ginkgo is a far better-known Mesozoic survivor, the family Xanthorrhea is ancient as well - it is possible that the Cretaceous saw the first Grass Trees growing in the soil of a fractured Gondwana.