{"id":142748,"date":"2021-11-10T15:54:57","date_gmt":"2021-11-10T20:54:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=142748"},"modified":"2024-10-29T13:31:38","modified_gmt":"2024-10-29T17:31:38","slug":"video-its-go-time-for-the-bates-ginkgo-tree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2021\/11\/10\/video-its-go-time-for-the-bates-ginkgo-tree\/","title":{"rendered":"Video: It’s go time for the Bates ginkgo tree"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cGinkgo day is a good day,\u201d said a passerby, gazing at the ginkgo tree outside Carnegie Science Hall as it commenced its annual leaf drop last Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The morning was below-freezing and crisp, so it was go time for the ginkgo. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI had a feeling that today would be the day,\u201d said Emma Christman \u201922, a biology and geology double major from Litchfield, Maine, as she stopped to watch the ginkgo\u2019s bright yellow leaves cascade to the ground on Nov. 4. \u201cIt\u2019s cold enough.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like the blooming of the magnolia tree outside Hathorn Hall each April, the ginkgo\u2019s leaf drop \u2014 typically in November \u2014 signals the change of season.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/lite-youtube>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n

In autumn, leaves fall when an \u201cabscission layer\u201d forms between leaf and stem. Most trees form these layers gradually, so leaves fall off over time. But ginkgos form abscission layers simultaneously. It\u2019s believed that a hard frost completes the process, leading to the leaves falling off in one fell swoop, like last Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The process of a leaf going from green to yellow to floating to the ground, is called senescence, and it\u2019s complex and not completely understood, says Associate Professor of Biology Brett Huggett. \u201cThere is a lot going on. In a ginkgo, senescence is controlled by plant hormones, such as methyl jasmonate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since 2017, Huggett and his students in his course \u201cDendrology and the Natural History of Trees\u201d have maintained the Bates Canopy website<\/a>, work that includes placing identification tags on campus trees with the tree\u2019s species name and a QR code that link to the tree\u2019s page on the canopy website.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBefore<\/span>After<\/span>\n

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\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/two-up>\n\n\n\n

During a brief conversation near the ginkgo, Christman, who took Huggett\u2019s dendrology course in 2019, pointed out things old and new about Bates trees. \u201cI try to keep in touch with the trees,\u201d she said with a laugh. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For one, she knew that the college\u2019s oldest historic elm located just outside the front doors of Alumni Gymnasium, had recently been taken down due to disease. “I counted the rings and got 136 \u2014 so roughly the year 1885,” she said, meaning it predates Alumni Gym, constructed in 1928. (Other, younger elms still dot the campus.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In terms of what’s new, she was also aware that the Carnegie ginkgo now has company: the saplings planted in front of newly opened Bonney Science Center are ginkgos. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The elm seen at left in this historic photo, close to the Alumni Gymnasium entrance, was recently taken down. This photograph is undated but likely pre-World War II. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n


The Carnegie ginkgo \u201cis such a cool tree, and in such a fun spot \u2014 you can\u2019t walk by without seeing it,\u201d she said. Christman is also aware that ginkgos are known as \u201cliving fossils\u201d because it\u2019s one of the few tree species living today of which fossilized records exist from more than a hundred million years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When not checking in with campus trees, Christman is working on her joint biology and geology thesis, advised by Professor of Earth and Climate Sciences Mike Retelle, now in his final year of teaching before retirement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She\u2019s conducting a study of 10,000-year-old ocean quahog shells, of the species Arctica islandica,<\/em> pulled from the sea bottom off Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m reconstructing the ocean temperatures from when they were alive,\u201d said Christman. Joining her on the project are fellow geology majors Maya McDonough \u201922 and Dewi Henry \u201822. Retelle has dubbed the group \u201cThe Clam Team.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cI just got my first set of data yesterday \u2014 very exciting. It\u2019s such cool stuff,\u201d she said, then headed off for an exam in her marine botany class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Emma Christman ’23 stops by the ginkgo tree outside Carnegie Science Hall on Nov. 4, 2021. (Jay Burns\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI had a feeling that today would be the day,\u201d said Emma Christman \u201922, a biology and geology double major who stopped to watch the ginkgo\u2019s bright yellow leaves cascade to the ground. \u201cIt\u2019s cold enough.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":142812,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[232,217],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment-sustainability","category-science-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142748"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":166038,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142748\/revisions\/166038"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}