Ginkgo Biloba Tree

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Classification

During the time of the dinosaurs seed plants (spermatophytes) were well developed and were the most dominant vegetation on earth, especially the lush seed ferns, conifers and palmlike cycads. These primitive seed plants are called gymnosperms (meaning "naked seeds") because their seeds are not enclosed in a ripened fruit but are protected by cones or by a fleshy seed coat.

Most gymnosperms (and flowering plants) have both sexes on the same plant, but the Ginkgo is a dioecious gymnosperm, male and female are separate trees, its seeds have a fleshy outer layer.
The Ginkgo and the cycads are the only living seed-producing plants that have motile or free swimming sperm.

In earlier classification systems the Ginkgo tree was placed in the class Coniferopsida, because it is thought to be more related to conifers than to any other gymnosperm, but the two groups appear to have evolved independently.
Although the Ginkgo is more like a conifer than a deciduous broadleaf tree it is neither, it has a unique position. Recent research suggests a much closer relationship to the cycads than to the conifers.


about 2,500 years old Ginkgo Queen in China
photo Wei Gong
Green algae (Coccomyxa) live in symbiosis with Ginkgo tissues, recent research has shown. So far this association is not known on any other tree and only occurs in the animal kingdom.
The Ginkgo is the sole living link between the lower and higher plants, between ferns and conifers.


You can distuinguish a Ginkgo from other gymnosperms by its fan shaped and bilobed leaves. All Ginkgo trees have a relatively primitive vascular system. The veins continuously divide into two's. This vein pattern (dichotomous venation) is unique to the Ginkgo.
Because of its unique position botanists found it difficult to classify the Ginkgo. Therefore the Ginkgo has been placed in a separate group in recent years, the division (phylum) Ginkgophyta.
This division consists of the single order Ginkgoales (Engler 1898), a single family Ginkgoaceae (Engler 1897), a single extant genus Ginkgo.
Click here for the classification scheme
There are two extinct genera: Ginkgoites and Baiera (known from fossilized leaves).
The only living representative of the order Ginkgoales is the Ginkgo biloba.

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