26 OCTOBER 2002, Page 42

Ginkgos from the ashes

From Mr Stephen Bather Sir: The excellent Dr Oliver Rackham remarks in his review of Thomas Pakenham's new tree book (Books, 12 October) that the ginkgo at Tokyo's Zempukuji temple 'must surely be a pollard'. Its history is more remarkable than Pakenham relates.

The upper half of the tree was destroyed in an air raid during the last war, and for several years Tokyo's champion ginkgo was thought to be dead. Miraculously, it revived and thrives today. But Japan's finest testament to the ginkgo's resilience must surely be the specimen in Hiroshima that survived the atomic bomb, not 1,000 metres from the epicentre of the blast. It was the first surviving tree to bud, undeformed, the following spring.

Stephen Barber

Tokyo