An ornamental tree in the USA. Its leaves are considered as herbal medicine for neurological disorders associated with aging such as Alzheimer disease, hearing and memory loss, attention deficit, etc. Its flavonoids appear to be effective scavangers of free radicals. Microarray hybridization was found to reveal higher level of tyrosine/threonine phosphatase and other mRNAs involved in up-regulation of activity in the brain cortex of mice upon consuming leaf extracts. Ginkgos are very old species. (See Watanabe CMH et al 2001 Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 98:6577; Zhu Z, Zheng S 2003 Nature [Lond] 423:821).