The ginkgo, a.k.a. the maidenhair tree, or the duck’s-foot tree, is remarkable in many ways. It is a living fossil, dating to the early Permian era. It has no close relatives (classification: Plantae, Ginkgophyta, Ginkgoopsida, Ginkgoales, Ginkgoaceae, Ginkgo, Ginkgo biloba), and one of its chief characteristics is hardiness: ginkgos in Hiroshima survived the atomic bomb. Ten per cent of all trees in Manhattan are ginkgos, making it the borough’s third-most-common species. There is also the matter of its odor. Each fall, the mature female—as dioecious gymnosperms, ginkgos come in genders—produces ovules that, once fertilized, develop into bunches of seeds, each consisting of an inner kernel encased in a soft, fuzzy skin. The seeds look like green cherries and contain butyric acid, the smell of which has been variously described as “rancid butter,” “sour milk,” “sh*tberries,” and “dog crap.” The Anti-Ginkgo Tolerance Group put it this way, in a recent proposal:
The members of the A.G.T.G. are few but spirited. The committee was formed in January, under the aegis of Teens Take the City, a Y.M.C.A. program designed to teach young people about local government, and one recent afternoon at the Grosvenor Neighborhood House, on the Upper West Side, its ranks numbered three: Tevin Perez, seventeen; Jackson Sansoucie, seventeen; and Daniel Maldonado, eighteen. The plan was to pass out pamphlets urging citizens to call 311 if they encountered the smelly seeds.
Perez, wearing a rumpled white button-down, khakis, and a puka-shell necklace, was the first to arrive. Seated at a table in a basement room with pocked blue walls, he and the group’s adviser, Stephen Lehtonen, said that, walking to a pizzeria one afternoon, the group had been inspired by a forty-foot ginkgo, on the front lawn of the nearby Frederick Douglass Houses, that particularly stunk. Perez likened its scent to “rotten eggs in a rare form.”
“What we haven’t discussed is the cultural-anthropology side of this,” Lehtonen said. “Some people view the tree differently. When we’re out on the street, you should ask why they like it.”
“O.K., I’ll look up some ginkgo recipes,” Perez said. He pulled out his cell phone and flipped open the keyboard.
Daniel Maldonado arrived, fresh from his graduation ceremonies, at St. Agnes. Maldonado, who has dimples and was wearing a gold ring with a scarlet stone, said that a clutch of ginkgos on Ninety-third and Columbus had been bothering him since he was a kid.
“You sound like somebody they go up to on NY1,” Perez said, squinting at the screen of his phone. “Hey, they use it to relieve hangovers!”
Soon, Jackson Sansoucie straggled in—shoulder-length curls, jeans, a rub-on tattoo of an eagle. As Sansoucie talked about how the odor of ginkgos was “reminiscent of dairy products” and flatulence, Lehtonen, steering the conversation back to community activism, asked how one would offer a flyer to a young lady.
“Don’t hit on them,” Perez offered. “Don’t say, ‘You look nice in that dress. Want a flyer?’ ”
To the streets. On the corner of 103rd and Broadway, a man wearing sunglasses approached Maldonado: “What is it, before I touch it?”
“It’s about trees—they have odor problems.”
“That, at least, is a natural smell!” the man yelled. “You should be advocating cleaning up the subway, getting homeless people showered and fed.” He skulked off, up Broadway.
“That guy needs a hug,” Maldonado said.
On the other side of Broadway, Perez was stalled on the northwest corner, in front of a kebab joint. He was having wind problems, flyers suctioning to his face, like some sort of killer birds. Sansoucie, on the same block, had adopted a roving technique, and a shouted slogan: “Stop the smell!”
Back across the street, Maldonado had had the misfortune of handing a flyer to a big, opinionated woman—red nails, pepper-spray key chain—who actually worked at 311. “You see seeds on the sidewalk?” she said. “So, then, the complaint is that they’re never sweeping the sidewalk. . . . But if the smell is coming from the grassy area you should direct your complaints to Housing Authority, not Sanit.”
The woman kept telling him off, and she’d drawn a crowd. “So how about just having the tree removed?” a young woman, straddling a mountain bike, ventured.
“You can’t even make a complaint, because it’s nature,” the woman replied. “You gonna cut down a banana tree because it has too many bananas?”
Eventually, the stack of flyers was depleted, and the boys headed back to Grosvenor House. They passed a Coco Helado cart, and everybody got ices. Then they returned to the basement for some Ping-Pong. Maldonado bounced the ball, about to serve. Perez cut in from the sideline: “Your serve stinks like ginkgo trees!” ♦
