{"id":3572,"date":"2008-06-23T09:44:34","date_gmt":"2008-06-23T14:44:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/?p=3572"},"modified":"2010-11-09T13:40:45","modified_gmt":"2010-11-09T18:40:45","slug":"is_that_me_or_just_that_foul-smelling_ginkgo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2008\/06\/is_that_me_or_just_that_foul-smelling_ginkgo.html","title":{"rendered":"Is That Me . . . Or Just That Foul-Smelling Ginkgo?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A civic-minded group starts the heavy lifting of eradicating vomitous female ginkgos from the city<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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:<\/p>\n

We are here to solve the problem of the Ginkgo tree commonly known as vomit trees. . . . The Ginkgo tree is widely known by most people but not by name. Walking down the street on a beautiful October evening your moment of tranquility is rudely demolished by the smell of old cheese and vomit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 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.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A civic-minded group starts the heavy lifting of eradicating vomitous female ginkgos from the city: 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-huzzah","category-the_natural_world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3572"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6233,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3572\/revisions\/6233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}