Signature flora of China's major cities

Gingko

Gingko biloba is a living fossil and the only one of its species still surviving. It is known as the yinxing, or silver almond, in northern parts of China while in the south, both fruit and tree are known as baiguo or white nut.

It is an extremely slow-growing and long-lived tree, and is also known as the gongxun shu, or grandfather-grandson tree - a reference to the fact that it takes three generations for the tree to fruit.