Ginkgo Tree Leaf Drop

When will the ginkgo tree lose its leaves? Will our ginkgo leaves drop soon? Familiar patterns and cadences help define homeness, I think. Ferry rhythm and holidays, seasonality and consoling habits of Susan and Carley. There’s some thing at once exciting and soothing, and invigorating and reassuring about. My notion of home is in no small way interwoven with these habitual and accustomed rhythms and rituals. Cyclical beginnings and endings, arrivals and departures, sowing and harvesting, thawing and freezing, waking and resting,… And in my case anticipation is an especially attractive aspect of these familiar happenings. Which brings me back to ginkgo tree leaf drop.

Any. Day. Now!

A dozen years ago I mentioned this unique annual event.

I awoke to see the Gingko (Ginkgo biloba) shedding its fan-shaped leaves. First I noticed the golden carpet ringing the tree trunk, and then I headed out and stood underneath the boughs to hear the last tumbling gingko leaves. (Source: The Day the Gingko Leaves Fell)

And a couple of years before that…

Each autumn the leaves of an enormous old Ginkgo Biloba tree in our yard retain their leaves until the frigid end. They’re among the last leaves to fall, and they remain green until just a day or two before cascading down. And when they decide it’s time to let go, they all do it at once.

An enormous canopy of a tree reaching about 100 feet tall covered in thick foliage one day and naked the next. It’s dramatic. And slightly surreal.

This morning, Wednesday, November 3, 2010 was the magic moment. We experienced a deep frost last night in Essex, NY, and I’m pretty certain that it’s the sudden temperature change which triggers the the leaves to fall.

The photos I took this morning capture the scene before anyone has driven up the driveway and marred the perfect carpet of almost succulent Gingko leaves. Perfect timing too because the wonderful father-son team who mow our lawns and remove our leaves come today. This is fortunate because the Gingko leaves fall so thickly and they are still so lush and heavy (unlike the crisp maple, ash and oak leaves which blow around in the breeze) that they smother the lawn. Prompt removal to the compost serves the lawn AND next spring’s gardens! (Source: virtualDavis.com)

Rachel Kurzius offers a nice glimpse of ginkgo tree leaf drop here.

Among my favorite qualities of the gingko tree is its decisiveness.

With most fall foliage, a leaf drops here or there, leaving its friends on the branch for a while longer. Not so with the gingko, whose leaves turn a lovely goldenrod before all falling to the ground simultaneously… (Source: dcist.com)

And even Martha Stewart waxed photographic on the dazzling late autumn phenomenon of ginkgo tree leaf drop.

Ginkgo trees have beautiful green leaves that turn a luminous golden yellow in fall. And on one day, after a hard frost sweeps down the east coast, my mighty ginkgo, along with the others at my farm and countless more in the area, drops its leaves leaving a gorgeous carpet of color below. (Source: themarthablog.com)

This in-depth explanation of the factors at play with ginkgo tree leaf drop by Denise Corkery is one of the most helpful I’ve read.

It is very common for Ginkgo biloba to lose its leaves all at one time; but, as is often the case with nature, the reasons behind this phenomenon are wonderfully complex.

The stems of leaves on deciduous trees are known as petioles. Before leaves drop in the fall, these petioles produce a protective layer of cells that work like a scar to protect trees from diseases entering the exposed tissue. Your maple tree produces these protective scars over several weeks as the amount of daylight and temperatures decrease, and they begin forming on the most exposed leaves, which is usually top.

As leaves drop and expose interior leaves to colder temperatures, these interior leaves form new protective layers, and additional leaves drop. Eventually, a hard frost causes all the remaining petioles to form this protective layer and all remaining leaves fall. For maples and many other trees, this process can take several weeks.

The way leaves fall from ginkgo trees is a little different. The petioles of ginkgo leaves form the protective layer simultaneously and wait for a hard frost to trigger all leaves to drop at the same time, which results in a lovely shower of golden leaves. (Source: chicagotribune.com)

When will our ginkgo tree lose its leaves? Any day — heck, any hour — now.