Today I noticed quite a few more Gingko biloba fruit had fallen from trees close to my workplace. There are not enough to organise a harvest yet but they are getting ripe and beginning to smell of vomit (as a colleague correctly put it today). Here is one of them. I thought I’d post a method for preparing them…
This link is to a very useful Instructables post about how to safely harvest and prepare the fruit and the nuts within. Note how seriously wearing rubber gloves is taken. The fruit contains a toxic chemical which is very likely to seriously irritate you, should you handle them with bear skin.
There are lots of female Gingko trees in Amsterdam, if you spot one near you it may be worth the effort of foraging the fruit in this way.
Urban Herbology 
Now you are talking! We used to harvest the fruit from the only female gingko biloba tree around when we lived in Launceston. Steve removed the pulp underwater making it a much less smelly event and much easier to accomplish without burning his hands. After we removed the pulp we stratified the seed and have so many little gingko biloba trees that we don’t know what to do with them! We are thinking that we might make a little copse of them somewhere to honour their autumn beauty, their amazing taxonomy and their useful seed. Thank you for this post 🙂
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We are still waiting for a big harvest of ginkgo but will delicately try your underwater trick when the time comes! Wonderful that you have manged to grow then from the seeds also. We must try that here. Any idea if the saplings are male or female?
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