Autumn in midtown Baltimore. The air is brisk and the streets are piled high with multi-colored leaves, and this unseasoned California girl is ashiver with pleasure. Winter is looming, and it might even snow soon. I've only seen this in movies before. Mostly, it's great, but something smells rotten out here. And then I realize why my homestretch constantly smells like a diaper pail: Ginkgo biloba, the trees which line our streets.

The fruit from the trees falls underfoot, and the smell -- rancid butryic acid -- never leaves you. Perhaps worst of all, we Baltimorons walk around like extras in an unfinished Stephen King novella, our soles stinking of shit and acting like nothing is amiss. Thank god I can't really afford to eat these days, because I'd never be able to keep my lunch down. And Baltimore being what it is, no one is really commissioned with the task of clearing the ginkgo detritus from the streets.

I already spend a great deal of time wondering about how we go about our lives, ignoring the obvious and omnipresent systems which govern our behavior -- like gender, for instance -- without our questioning the origins of those systems, or why so few of us seem to be motivated to action. Overthrowing the hegemonic tyranny of binary gender is one thing, but you'd think someone could operate a pushbroom for the public benefit. I'd donate to the cause.

As I broke the silence with others who were tiptoeing through the dingleberries, I found some very interesting facts about ginkgo biloba.

First of all, it's a dinosaur. Some call it a living fossil. Ginkgo biloba is the last remaining species of the genus (ginkgo), which has been around in some form or other since the yesterzoic period. My cursory research finds some of the earliest records of ginkgo in China, concurrent with the European Renaissance. Ginkgo is a rough translation of a Chinese phrase for "silver apricot." Ginkgo was first brought to Europe in the early 18th century, and to the US in 1784. Goethe wrote a pretty bad poem about it, which is why he is known for Faust. Some dude named Sir Albert Seward is quoted as saying of ginkgo, "We see it as an emblem of changelessness," as if this is a good thing.

Interestingly, it is thought that the first ginkgo trees brought to the US came over on the same boat as the first Trees of Heaven, the tree which is the star of the novel A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, and which is itself a tree which is largely scorned by the suburban classes.

More importantly, ginkgo is dioecious, which means that it is one of a very few existing species of plant which specifically differentiates, plant for plant, into either a female or a male sex. The female ginkgo trees, by the way, are the ones which bear fruit, and so for the purposes of this argument I'm going to have to bracket all essentialist and anthropomorphic feminist considerations of the ginkgo. City planners recommend that male ginkgo trees be planted when ginkgo is planted as an ornamental tree, as they are here in Baltimore. Of course, I'm certain that this recommendation was made after city planner types visited Baltimore to realize what happens when you don't follow said guidelines.

One of the main reasons that city planner types will plant ginkgo in very urban areas is that it thrives in toxic environments. Smog, traffic, brutal weather -- nothing short of chain saws will kill these trees, and even then I have my doubts. Legendarily, a ginkgo tree grows in Hiroshima, outside of a temple. When the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the temple was destroyed, while the ginkgo tree apparently survived, and soon afterwards the tree supposedly bloomed. At very least, this means that cockroaches, Twinkies, ginkgo biloba and the zombie warlords of the Bush regime will survive into the next century. And they will probably be dragging their precious gender binary along with them, like a smell they've forgotten to be offended by.

For many years in Santa Cruz, the virtues of ginkgo as an herbal supplement were extolled to me. My herbalist friends tell me that it's supposed to be great for enhancing memory and attentiveness. Of course, giving up pot is another good way to enhance memory and attentiveness, and if I can remember to, I'll come back to that point in a moment.

I'm inclined to agree with the hypothesis about ginkgo's effects on memory, if only because everyone knows that the olfactory system is the best memory trigger. I will certainly never forget the smell of Baltimore in November. There's a lot of crap I've forgotten that I'd love to remember, but not everything is really worth dredging up. If ignorance is bliss, senility might well be ecstasy. I'm skeptical of the utility of a toxic, binaristic urban dinosaur; I'm not so sure I want to remember the kinds of things ginkgo might make me remember, especially if that memory is of a gender binary I keep struggling to leave behind.

There are other dioecious plants. Most of them are ornamental, like ginkgo and holly. And then there is cannabis, which, unlike ginkgo, can be male, female, or hermaphroditic; and the sex determination apparently has a great deal to do with the environment in which it is raised. More or less, the plant is able to choose its own sex, albeit within a limited field of options. No wonder it's illegal in so many places.

Rahne Alexander works two retail jobs and finds capitalism to be more fulfilling than ever.