Oldest extant tree species

The oldest species of tree still alive today is the maidenhair (Ginkgo biloba) of Zhejiang, China, which first appeared about 160 million years ago during the Jurassic era, though the genus' ancestry is believed by many palaeobotanists to date back much further to 270 million years ago in the Permian era. It is often referred to as the oldest living fossil.

G. biloba was rediscovered by Engelbert Kaempfer (Germany) in 1690 and reached England c. 1754. It has been grown in Japan since c. 1100, where it is now known as ichou.

Leaf imprints of ancestral species of ginkgo trees have been found in sedimentary rocks of the Jurassic and Triassic periods (135–210 million years ago).