Ginkgo fruits and fall leaves. (Photo: Joe Angeles/Washington University)
Washington University’s glorious ginkgo allée, located just east of the John M. Olin Library, was part of the historic Cope and Stewardson plan for the campus. The ginkgo tree’s unique fan-shaped leaves turn brilliant golden yellow in fall.
Renner
The gingko tree is also an example of a dioecious plant: one that has either male or female flowers, not both. Such sexual specialization comes at a cost to plants. But even so, hundreds of land plant lineages have independently evolved separate sexes.
Why and how this happened has been a longstanding question for biologists. Susanne S. Renner, honorary professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, is co-author of a new review that tackles the genetic basis of sex determination in plants. The study was published in Nature Plants in March.