Gingko tree is a living fossil

I’M just back from a holiday in France. I stayed for a few days in Dinan, a beautiful medieval town in Brittany.

I strolled into a small park, the Jardin des Anglais, which has a panoramic view of the river port, in a steep gorge below the town. Tourists admired the view, but I focused on an extraordinary tree in the park.

I walked over to make sure, but it was unmistakable — a truly enormous Ginkgo biloba, by far the largest I’ve seen, its strange, fan-shaped leaves turning from bright green to lemon yellow as autumn approached.