Chinese forestry experts have discovered 30 ancient gingkgo trees aged between 500 and 1,300 years old in Wannian County of east China's Jiangxi Province.

The experts said that it was rare to find such a large number of ancient gingkgo trees in a single place in China.

Of the 30 gingkgo trees, 21 are more than 1,000 years old.

A 1,300-year-old gingkgo tree, the oldest in the group, is 25 meters high with a trunk diameter of 2.25 meters. It produces one ton of fruit annually, according to villagers from Xiyuan village of Wufeng Township.

The oldest tree species in the world and dubbed "a living fossil", gingkgo trees flourished in many places in Europe and Asia 200 million years ago.

Most of the trees were destroyed when the Quaternary Period glaciers appeared some 2 million years ago, but some have survivedin China.
 
(Xinhua News Agency  November 1, 2003)