Resilient Reminder -- Ginkgo Tree Was Planted Nearly 100 Years Ago

ISSAQUAH

Herbal medicines made from ground Ginkgo biloba leaves are reputed to prevent memory loss.

The same might be said about downtown Issaquah's rare ginkgo tree, which is being celebrated Aug. 16 as a reminder of the city's simpler past.

Almost a century ago, after the town changed its name from Gilman, Issaquah's first mayor, Dr. W.E. Gibson, planted the ginkgo in the front yard of his Victorian home near the southeast corner of Front Street South and East Sunset Way.

The house is gone, but the tree survives, despite being surrounded by a blacktop parking lot since the 1970s.

At that time, developer Morris Piha contemplated chopping it down to make way for his shopping center, but a petition drive by Issaquah High School students persuaded him to save it.

"We were not as aware of environmental issues as we are now," he recalls. "I didn't know what a ginkgo tree was."

In a city where economic growth is wiping out huge swaths of woodlands, the ginkgo is somewhat of a totem.

"It was planted by a prominent citizen so long ago and has survived the onslaught of commercial growth in Issaquah - because it's survived all that, it represents the desire of Issaquah to remain a small town," said Susan Smith, executive director of Main Street Issaquah, a group that promotes the health of the city's old business district.

Ginkgoes are resilient. Dinosaurs munched the leaves in the Mesozoic Era. A 350-year-old ginkgo near a Hiroshima temple

withstood the atomic bomb.

The trees were native to Washington but vanished; petrified wood still exists in a Central Washington desert that was a lush ginkgo forest 16 million years ago. Ginkgoes almost went extinct worldwide but were saved by Buddhist monks in Asia, who adopted them as sacred trees.

Ginkgo leaves look like fans or duck feet. A cleft between the two lobes of the leaf (hence the name biloba) moved German philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to write his lover in 1815: "Does it represent one living creature, which has divided itself? Or are these Two, which have decided that they should be as one?"

Expressing its own ginkgo sentiments, the city of Issaquah hired artist Shel Bird of Seattle to paint a downtown bus shelter with ginkgo leaves and lore. A picnic table soon will be installed next to the tree.

Two descendants of Mayor Gibson will be at the 10 a.m. ceremony Aug. 16.

His tree is a female, 60 feet high and a yard wide. Female ginkgoes produce a orange-tan fruit, but the Issaquah tree doesn't produce much, probably because there aren't male trees around to pollinate it. Perhaps Gibson planted a female tree inadvertently because it's difficult to tell males and females apart before about age 10, speculates city arborist Alan Haywood.

Haywood would like more ginkgoes in town. One was planted about four years ago in downtown's Centennial Park, and city plans allow developers to plant them as street trees in some areas.

For Main Street Issaquah, it's hoped the tree ceremony will build momentum for more beautification projects that encourage pedestrians to spend time downtown.

After this month's ginkgo hoopla, chances are most of the 30,000 or so daily motorists on Front Street won't notice the tree, despite its listing as an official city treasure.

One who does is Mayor Ava Frisinger, who charms her grandchildren with tales of an ancient tree that co-existed with the dinosaurs. Given the supersonic pace of today's lifestyles, children might think of Issaquah's early years as prehistoric, too.