Ginkgo Biloba - History and Folklore
The ginkgo, or maidenhair tree, is one of the oldest living species in the world. Fossilized ginkgo leaves date back more than 200 million years and have been found in Europe and North America as well as in Asia. An individual ginkgo tree may survive for a millennium.
Ginkgo is listed in the early Chinese materia medica, Chen Noung Pen T'sao. The references are dated by some traditions to 2800 B.C. although historical linguists trace the oldest known Chinese pictographs to the oracle bones of the Shang dynasty (approximately 1750 to 1050 B.C.). Longer texts in characters, including the materia medica, are known from the Zhou dynasty (approximately 1050 to 750 B.C.), a period later honored as the source of ancient traditions. When Emperor Shi Huangdi, final builder of the Great Wall of China, decided in 213 B.C. to destroy the power of the scholarly elite by burning all books, he spared the texts related to medicine, divination, and agriculture. The surviving manuscripts include medicinal uses of ginkgo nuts from the first millennium B.C. These early uses include impotence, chilblains, memory loss, asthma, and deafness. It was believed to prevent drunkenness and bedwetting. Ginkgo had a long-lasting reputation as an aphrodisiac and as a general promoter of longevity.
