Who wouldn't feel playful under one of France's favorite ornamental trees from China? That half of the Ginko Biloba trees we saw at the arboretum this week were already yellow or turning yellow while the other half were still green left us perplexed, until we read that the male trees are more precocious than the females. In the spring, the male trees' leaves appear two weeks earlier than the females', and yellow as well two weeks earlier in the autumn. The ancient and resistant to pollution species is commonly known in France as l'arbre aux quarante écus owing to the fact that in the late 18th-century a French botanist bought five ginkos from an English botanist, paying 40 écus d'or or gold coins for each tree.
©2014 P.B. Lecron
An update...
Put some enchanting new children's books in the lives of your kids and grandkids! Our captivating and illustrated tales arouse the curiosity of the very young and old alike! Available worldwide in both French and English on Amazon, you can click on the titles to take a peek: Le Lapin et le Roi Grenouille; The Rabbit and King Frog; Le Lapin la Lune; and The Rabbit and the Moon.
