How Humanity Saved the Ginkgo

Pressed between the pages of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland — a favorite book of my childhood, which my grandmother used to read to me and which still dwells in her immense library — is a single yellow leaf, its curved fan almost glowing against a faded illustration of the White Rabbit gazing anxiously at his pocket watch.

I still remember the afternoon I picked it up from under the four majestic ginkgo trees standing sentinel at the northern entrance of Varna’s Sea Garden — the iconic park p...