Life is often a very difficult phenomenon to explain, as researchers encounter cases where the permanence of living beings in certain habitats seems practically impossible, and yet life finds a way.
This is what happens with the Ginkgo biloba tree. One of the facts that most attracts everyone’s attention is that it survived a nuclear explosion, which destroyed everything in its path, except for this plant species.
After the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima, temperatures reached 7,000 degrees Fahrenheit, up to a radius of two miles from ground zero. To put this into perspective, volcanic lava reaches 2,400 degrees Fahrenheit.
Six trees of this species that were located just a mile from ground zero came back to life despite having shed their leaves a few months after the catastrophe.
Ginkgo biloba has earned the nickname “living fossil”
Ginkgo biloba is known as “the living fossil” because its species dates back more than 290 million years. This reveals another great milestone of this tree: it survived the extinction of the dinosaurs and practically all existing fauna.
However, despite their great resilience, these trees had a great ally to keep them alive, someone who is often an enemy: human beings saved the Ginkgo biloba, as this species was extinct in the wild until the early 20th century.
However, some researchers have claimed that all the trees found today, in some areas of China, were repopulated by Buddhist monks.