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Ginkgo seeds have been used in traditional Chinese medicine for thousands of years, and cooked seeds are occasionally eaten. More recently, ginkgo leaf extract has been used to treat a variety of ailments and conditions, including asthma, bronchitis, fatigue, and tinnitus (ringing in the ears).
Today, people use ginkgo leaf extracts hoping to improve memory; to treat or help prevent Alzheimer's disease and other types of dementia; to decrease intermittent claudication (leg pain caused by narrowing arteries); and to treat sexual dysfunction, multiple sclerosis, tinnitus, and other health conditions.
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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.
Green algae live in symbiosis with the Ginkgo embryo and reproductive tissue, 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.
A Ginkgo tree can reach about 30 sometimes 40 metres (100 feet) height and a spread of 9 metres. The trunk can become about 4 metres (13 feet) wide in diameter (in open areas much larger; near temples 50 m with girth 10 m grow!) and is straight columnar and sparingly branched. Some trees are very wide spreading, others are narrow.
Young trees have a central trunk, pyramidal in shape, with regular, lateral, ascending, asymmetrical branching and open growth. Older trees have an oval to upright spreading growth and sometimes irregular branching and tremendous sized limbs and trunk. When about 100 years old its canopy begins to widen.
The male tree usually has a slim column form and is slightly longer, the female tree has a wider crown and a more spread out form.
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