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The ginkgo biloba, with its beautiful fan-shaped leaves, is grown around the world today. But botanist Peter Crane tells Bridget Kendall how the tree survived a near extinction and clung on in only a few scattered locations in China for thousands of years, until humans began spreading the seeds across Asia, Europe and other parts of the world, thus unwittingly reintroducing a species with a lineage dating back to the age of the dinosaurs.

Peter Crane is the former director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London. He is author of Ginkgo: The Tree That Time Forgot.

Image: A ginkgo in Beijing, China
Credit: Visual China Group via Getty Images