Ginkgo biloba du Jardin des Plantes de Montpellier

Montpellier

In the Jardin des Plantes de Montpellier, the oldest botanical garden in France, founded in 1593, grows one of the very first ginkgo bilobas ever introduced onto French soil. The story begins in 1788 in London, where the Montpellier naturalist Auguste Broussonnet received a young plant of this tree from China through the good offices of the British botanist Joseph Banks, before sending it on to his colleague Antoine Gouan, who planted it in his own garden at the Peyrou. Seven years later, in 1795, a layer taken from this first specimen was transplanted to the Jardin des Plantes, where it soon caught up with the growth of the mother tree. The two ginkgos flowered around 1812, revealing that both were male: the species being dioecious, it could not then reproduce on the spot. It was not until 1830, and the initiative of Professor Delile, who had female branches imported from Switzerland grafted onto it, that this marriage, half a century in the waiting, finally bore fruit — quite literally — allowing viable seeds to be sent on to other French botanical gardens. Now more than two hundred years old, this ginkgo bears witness to the adventure of acclimatising exotic species in Europe and to the pioneering role played by Montpellier's botanists in French natural history.

Getting there : Jardin des Plantes, boulevard Henri IV, Montpellier, Hérault

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

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