Ginkgo Biloba “Fruit” – or Something Else?

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— Written By Thomas Glasgow and last updated by Jami Hooper
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Not exactly a welcome sight on or underneath the ginkgo tree. Ginkgo fruit creates a mess and produce a very unpleasant odor, to the extent that the nursery industry makes every effort to keep only male trees in the pipeline. And to confuse things just a bit, ginkgo “fruit” are not technically fruit. As Dirr explains in his Manual of Woody Landscape Plants:  “Actually not a true fruit but simply a naked seed; tan to orangish in color, plum-like in shape; … the fleshy covering on the seed (female gametophyte) is extremely messy and malodorous …”
Similarly, the North Carolina Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox refers to the ginkgo’s plum-like naked seeds with hard, smooth, and cream-colored inner walls. This inner wall, of course, presents the appearance of a seed inside a pulpy fruit. But in reality, the whole structure is just a highly unusual version of a seed.
It turns out that seed-propagated ginkgo may take up to 20 years to become mature enough to begin flowering. So if you do have a female, you might not discover that fact for many years after planting. If ginkgo in a residential landscape does turn out to be a female, removal of the tree isn’t necessarily the required or best option. If the fruit is removed from the site while still green, they won’t be nearly as messy and any odor problems should be greatly reduced. This will require some effort during the fruiting period, every year, but ginkgos are otherwise beautiful and tough trees.
Immature seed

Immature seed on ginkgo in Bristol, Tennessee, August 15.

Ginko fruit

Somebody needs to clean up this mess.

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