Smelly Trees.(The Talk of the Town)(ginkgo tree, anti-ginkgo tolerance group)

The ginkgo, a.k.a. the maidenhair tree, or the duck's-foot tree, is remarkable in many ways. It is a living fossil, dating to the early Permian era. It has no close relatives (classification: Plantae, Ginkgophyta, Ginkgoopsida, Ginkgoales, Ginkgoaceae, Ginkgo, Ginkgo biloba), and one of its chief characteristics is hardiness: ginkgos in Hiroshima survived the atomic bomb. Ten per cent of all trees in Manhattan are ginkgos, making it the borough's third-most-common species. There is also the matter of its odor. Each fall, the mature female--as dioecious gymnosperms, ginkgos come in genders--produces ovules that, once fertilized, develop into bunches of seeds, each consisting of an inner kernel encased in a soft, fuzzy skin. The seeds look like green cherries and contain butyric acid, the smell of which has been variously described as "rancid butter," "sour milk," "sh*tberries," and "dog crap." The Anti-Ginkgo Tolerance Group put it this way, in a recent proposal:

We are here to solve the problem of the Ginkgo tree commonly known as vomit trees. . . . The Ginkgo tree is widely known by most people but not by name. Walking down the street on a beautiful October evening your moment of tranquility is rudely demolished by the smell of old cheese and vomit.

The members of the A.G.T.G. are few but spirited. The committee was formed in January, under the aegis of Teens Take the City, a Y.M.C.A. program designed to teach young people about local government, and one recent afternoon at the Grosvenor Neighborhood House, on the Upper West Side, its ranks numbered three: Tevin Perez, seventeen; Jackson Sansoucie, seventeen; and Daniel Maldonado, eighteen. The plan was to pass out pamphlets urging citizens to call 311 if they encountered the smelly seeds.

Perez, wearing a rumpled white button-down, khakis, and a puka-shell necklace, was the first to arrive. Seated at a table in a basement room with pocked blue walls, he and the group's adviser, Stephen Lehtonen, said that, walking to a pizzeria one afternoon, the group had been inspired by a forty-foot ginkgo, on the front lawn of the nearby Frederick Douglass Houses, that particularly stunk. Perez likened its scent to "rotten eggs in a rare form."

"What we haven't discussed is the cultural-anthropology side of this," Lehtonen said. "Some people view the tree differently. When we're out on the street, you should ask why they like it."

"O.K., I'll look up some ginkgo recipes," Perez said. He pulled out his cell phone and flipped open the keyboard.

Daniel Maldonado arrived, fresh from his graduation ...