Said to be one of the worlds oldest species of trees, ginkgo has survived and thrived through the many stages of humanity. Depending on how you see the human story, this tree was here long before. As humans learned to utilize the herbs around them, the popularity of ginkgo spread.
Once found only in Asia, specifically the lands we now call China, ginkgo trees can be found all over the world. They are slow growing and beautiful and able to survive all kinds of pollution. I even read that one old ginkgo tree survived just 1 km away from an atomic blast! (source) There is no way I can verify this claim but, I can say that ginkgo trees are common in urban and suburban planning. Frequently they can be seen in neighborhoods and even between crosswalks in cities across the Americas.
In the post I wrote last year about ginkgo, I focused on the "mind medicine" this tree contains. Thus far in my career as an herbalist I have used the leaves of ginkgo as a mental tonic, alongside rosemary to stimulate blood flow to the brain and improve memory.
Recently, however, I have learned that ginkgo leaves are also helpful in a detoxification protocol. Instead of harvesting the leaves to dry and use as tea throughout the year, I am trying something new ...
... I am simply adding a leaf or two to my mug of recently boiled water. As a busy multi-tasker it can be hard to resist the temptation to reach for a caffeinated beverage in the afternoons to keep my energy high until bed time. Instead I am rotating between a hot chocolate or a cup of ginkgo tea to stimulate my brain and, in the case of ginkgo, detoxify my body.
Today I wanted to dig a bit as to how exactly ginkgo leaves can help the body detoxify. I found plenty of scientific explanations but, I don't know if they are to be shared here. I feel that people enjoy my herbal profiles not for the scientific info but rather from the human stories I share, the pictures of beautiful plants I take myself and the processes I show of sowing, harvesting, and creating with the herbs.
Instead of listing off complicated words that are unlikely to stick in my brain nor yours, I wanted to circle back to ginkgo's amazing resilience to the waves of pollution humans have brought upon this earth. Along busy streets the tree's leaves thrive despite the intense fumes from cars and industry and even near the center of the detonation of an atomic bomb ginkgo carried on. I am not suggesting that we harvest leaves from any of these trees for medicine. But maybe, the stories of ginkgo's surviving 270 million years of cataclysms and humanity tell us more about the detoxifying powers than any string of words can.