'Like dog poo': Historic N.S. garden gets a smelly surprise from tree

For 40 years, staff at Nova Scotia's Annapolis Royal Historic Gardens thought their ginkgo tree was male.

Then they got a very smelly surprise earlier this year.

Male ginkgos are typically the only ginkgo tree sold commercially because females produce fruit-like seeds that emit a noticeable odour when they fall to the ground and are crushed under people's feet. 

“It has a really obnoxious smell,” said Trish Fry, manager of the gardens. “Something like dog poo or rancid butter or even compared to vomit. It's just, I guess, pretty brutal.”

Fry knows the smell because the seeds unexpectedly showed up at the park this year for the first time since the tree was planted in the early 1980s.

A visitor pointed out the seeds to staff who initially dismissed the suggestion they were coming from the gingko.

“We said ‘No, no, it doesn't 'cause it's a male and we've never had fruit on the tree,’” Fry told CBC News.

Staff, including the historic gardens’ horticulturalist, took a closer look, however, and determined the tree was in fact female. 

They also learned ginkgo trees can take decades to fully mature, Fry said.

“You've been living with the gingko for 40 years, but then suddenly you realize it isn't quite what you thought it was,” she joked. 

Ashlea Viola, the horticulturist for the gardens, was just as surprised as anyone but said it’s not the first time a female ginkgo tree was planted by mistake. 

A Montreal-area resident called on the local municipal government to replace his female ginkgo tree that was unknowingly planted on his property and producing the smelly fruit-like seeds.

Viola said the ginkgo is so popular because of its beautiful leaves and colours. The leaves turn from a green to a bright yellow in the autumn before falling all at once and leaving a colour carpet on the ground, she said. 

Ginkgos are known just as much for their resilience as their beauty, Viola said. She said they’re the only species of their kind left.