Living and fossil Ginkgo leaves

The data presented here are a collection of images of living and
fossil Ginkgo leaves. Mature and fully expanded
leaves were harvested from a reproductively immature Ginkgo biloba tree
growing in partial shade as a specimen on the campus of The Open
University, UK. The specimen was ascended using a ladder and seven
branches growing towards the West at approximately halfway up the specimen
were removed from the trunk using a saw. Every leaf growing on each branch
was plucked from the base of the petiole and dried in a plant press. A
total of 468 leaves from a mixture of short-shoots and long-shoots were
collected from the specimen. Each of these leaves was photographed next to
a scale bar using a digital camera positioned 20cm above a light box.
Twenty-two fossil leaves produced by evolutionary relatives of living
Ginkgo biloba were extracted from the collections of the Natural History
Museum in London, and two fossil leaves were extracted from the geology
collections of the School of Environment, Earth and Ecosystem Sciences,
The Open University. Each fossil leaf was photographed next to a scale bar
using a digital camera and the outline of each fossil was traced using
Adobe Illustrator to create a digital outline of each leaf.