'A living fossil': one of the oldest trees on earth might be stinking up your backyard

Have you ever taken a stroll down a tree-lined street in the fallin Vancouver only to stop and wonder,"Wow,what is that smell?"

The odds are youwalked past a gingko biloba tree one of the mostpopular urban trees in Vancouver.

Each fall, femalegingko trees produce edible nuts, andaccording to 'Tree Guy' DavidTracey, they'rerumoured to have certain medicinal properties.

But they smell bad. Like,really bad.

"When they rot on the ground ... some people say it smells like dog droppings, some people say it smells like vomit."

ButTraceysays you shouldn't let the smell distract you. The trees areliving legends.

Gingko biloba trees have grown for nearly 270 million years they're one of the oldest living species of trees onEarth. They predate the dinosaurs, which started taking strides tens of millions of years later.

"All of the evolution everything that's happened to the world, to plants, to humans everything changed," Tracey said on CBC's North By Northwest.

"The gingko tree has managed to survive and continue just this way. Is that not a testament to greatness? What else can do that?"

According to Tracey, the gingko biloba tree is a living fossil, meaning itclosely resembles species that existed millions of years ago that are only known through the fossil record.

Other living fossils include crocodiles, elephant sharks, and the horseshoe crab.

Sticking around in Chinatown

"If it can survive 270 million years dinosaurs munching on it maybe it can survive Chinatown," said Tracey."It's been getting more popular because it'ssuchatough, urban tree."

In fact, they line the streets of Vancouver's Chinatown.

A symbol of hope

"It's an amazing tree. The fact that we have it today is also amazing," said Tracey."It was thought, and still is thought by some botanists, to have gone extinct in the wild."

According to Tracey, wild gingko biloba trees may exist inpockets in eastern China.However, there is disagreement on whether or not they are cultivated.

"But we know it survived through cultivation, specifically in old temples in China thousands of years ago."

"Survived"is not a term to be taken lightly for gingko trees.

"There are trees in Hiroshima, which is a testament to their resilience.When the whole city was flattened and devastated by the atomic bomb, six gingko trees remained alive."

"They got completely torched they look like charred remains of tree. But they say when the leaves leafed out again, it was like a symbol of hope to the people in Hiroshima."

With files from CBC's North by Northwest

To listen to the full interview, click on the audio labelled:What's classified as a living fossil and can survive a nuclear bomb? The gingko tree, of course