150 The Ginkgo in America by PETER DEL TREDICI During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, private estates played a central role in the development of American horticulture. Wealthy landowners enthusiastically planted everything they could get a hold of in a spirit of experimentation. Most of these gardens are now either badly overgrown or totally destroyed. The few that remain are fully mature and give little indication of the reckless abandon with which they were originally planted. Wodenethe, Henry Winthrop Sargent’s estate in Beacon, New York, is a good example of this horticultural experimentation. Between 1840 and 1882, Sargent planted hundreds of exotic species, many of which had never been grown in this country (Sargent, 1897b). When I visited Wodenethe in the spring of 1981, very little trace of Mr. Sargent’s work could be found. The main building had been razed and a housing development built on the estate. But here and there a few relics of the glorious past remained. In all, I found about twenty trees that could be traced back to Sargent’s day. A beautiful old ginkgo in particular caught my eye. I felt, somehow, that I had seen this tree before. And indeed, I had, in other nineteenth century estates I had visited, where old ginkgoes had similarly survived the twin test of time and neglect. No one appreciated the powers of endurance of Ginkgo biloba bet- ter than Professor C. S. Sargent, Henry Winthrop’s cousin, who, writ-