I’ve written about Golden Street before – the street near the apartment that glows yellow in the low late afternoon spring sun when the golden coloured concrete buildings have a mellow reflective glow about them, not dissimilar to that of Cotswold limestone.  And at night the tops of the tower blocks are lit up with golden lighting.

But I found out in the late autumn another reason why Golden Street is so called.  We arrived in January last year, so we were too late to fully understand.

The street is lined with Gingko bilobas which turn a deep yellow in the cooler days of late autumn here in Shanghai.  In the middle of December, when the temperature had reached around 12 deg C they displayed their true colours

and thereby provide another reason why the street is given its name.   You can see from these pictures why they are also called the Maidenhair tree as the leaves fall in hair-like strands from the branches in thick yellow cascades.

These are relatively young trees, planted in a Japanese neighbourhood here in Shanghai.  But they are a long way from the famous Japanese Gingko tunnel at Tokyo’s Meiji Shrine, which I knew nothing about before I came here, but which surely must belong to any list of the most glorious gardening sights in the world, up there with Monet’s garden at Giverny.  Perhaps, in a hundred years, if the tower blocks and the street last that long, these trees in Golden Street in Shanghai will look as glorious – I don’t think they are doing too badly even now.

Gingko Tunnel at Tokyo’s Meiji Shrine