Does anyone know how to change a Ginkgo trees gender?
They don’t “change gender”, anymore than people do. (okay – some do with surgical help – but that’s another topic) What most likely happened with the tree in question is that last year it didn’t fruit, because the flowers were damaged by a late frost. That happened to ALL KINDS of trees around here that year – we had freaky worm weather, which cause early flowering in a lot of trees and shrubs, followed by a nasty deep freeze in April that lasted over a week. Wiped out a lot of fruit crops as well. When the flowers are killed by a late frost, they die before they are fertilized and set fruit. So no fruit. You can’t order up a late killer frost fro when the tree flowers, but it is possible to prevent pollination. But you’d have to spray the whole thing a couple times when it comes into flower. Easy for a small tree – but if it’s as big as a 4 story building…you’d need to hire an arborist with equipment to do it, and it’d be pretty expensive.
