Wonkette
THIS IS WHY DOWNTOWN SMELLS LIKE ASS: Here is a true fact about the source of DC’s insidious fecal odor, gleaned from the Universal Source of All True Things, Wikipedia, by Wonkette Informant Tyler: “I spent most of yesterday afternoon wondering why the entirety of Buffalo Billiards (and the rest of Dupont, really) smelled like dog shit more than usual. Turns out that the female gingko trees drop pods/seeds that smell like shit when they split open.” Ginkgo trees are a metaphor for the sacred loins of Barbara Bush Sr. [Wikipedia]
Are you suggesting the Bushes are pod-people from “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”?
Cuz there’s a bunch of rather pissed-off-looking giant pea pods out here that want to have a word with you.
Has absolutely nothing to do with people crapping in alleys behind dumpsters.
So the shitstorm we’ve been through for the last eight years has nothing to do with it?
Gingkos are (among the many) non-native, invasive species banes of this country. The fruit REEKS and is the equivalent of cartoon banana peels on the sidewalk. You slip and slide and get dog-poop-smelling rotten fruit all over your shoes. Lovely.
Another lovely tree is the Bradford pear, whose flowers in the spring smell exactly like old fish.
And Ginko trees are from China, so GWB was the Manchurian Candidate.
There is also a tree, crab apple I think, that smells like skanky vagina when it blooms in the spring. Just wanted to add to your disgusting tree knowledge.
Maybe Virginia is sneaking into the District in the middle of the night and dumping all their crap, just like Marion Barry decided to clean up the problem in DC’s 14th Street red-light district by having the police round up the hookers and marching them across the bridge to Virginia.
Doglessliberal: Yes! Bradford pear is the tree I was thinking of. Now I have slandered the crab apple. I take it back. Crab apples are perfect lovely trees as far as I know, it is the Bradford pear that smells like rotten lady parts.
Jeezus, why can’t they plant those trees whose fruit animals get drunk on, like in Africa. I can’t find a downside to this plan.
In other news, the oddly named Elephant Poop Tree’s fruit smells like Love.
There are trees that drop fruits that smell like vomit. There are also trees that drop fruits that smell like spunk.
Mother nature plays odd tricks on us.
OffTheRecord: that’s the Bradford. Unmistakable.
Cheesis K. Reist!! Babs Bush’s bush…rat bastards! My head’s spinning imagining the choking stench that must emanate from that foul cave. One only has to review the host of vile demons it spewed all over the landscape, to begin to imagine its terrifying powers…
Serolf Divad: We had those spunk smelling trees on my college campus! Oh that was fun. I was a school tour guide and the looks on the parent’s faces when those trees started smelling and you walked by a dorm were fantastic.
I thought it was the love pheromones of grumpy old legislators pining for young Congressional pages. You learn something new every day.
ginkgo trees more like stinko trees lololol
This was covered recently on Prince of Petworth (http://www.princeofpetworth.com/2008/12/matt-laments-gingko-trees/)
Unca Cecil knows all. (Read about a quarter of the way down.)
I’m surprised people who spend time in DC even have a sense of smell anymore.
We are very familiar with the barf-berries here in Philadelphia. Truly nauseating.
The spunk trees are the worst. Adelphi Road near UMD in the spring used to kill me back when I was in school, it was like walking into a peep show booth.
Dupont always smells like that.
I have always referred to those things as “stinky cheese berries.” They smell like someone threw up half digested cheese. So walking through Adams Morgan on a Tuesday now smells like walking through Adams Morgan on a Saturday.
Serolf Divad: I hate spunk.
Old ladies sell ginkgo nuts on the street in Chinese cities. They taste not unlike vomit, which initially made me think they were “shelled” in the old ladies’ mouths, but, no, that is just how they taste. Our Chinese overlords will make us eat them when they realize that all the US treasury bills they’re sitting have turned to dust.
Oh. I’m only supposed to hug the trees? Sorry.
DanginMpls: Oi! You have to cook them first. Also the ginko nuts.
Butyric acid is why the fruit smells. It’s also found in rancid butter, Parmesan cheese and vomit. Keeps the seeds and those other things from being eaten.
With global warming on track, we will soon begin planting the lovely ornamental duryan trees in and around Foggy Bottom.
I don’t think they smell like poop so much as vomit. And it’s gross beyond imagining.
If Dubya was staying longer, stinking corpse lillies would go great in the White House rose garden, too…
The VP’s residence (even if denuded of all vegetation) probably already smells like that.
“Ginkgo trees are a metaphor for the sacred loins of Barbara Bush Sr.”
OH! The mental image I just got was quite disturbing!!
Note: It’s only the female member of the species that stinks. The city of NY will plant only the male member.
That sounds wierd.
sanantonerose: Butyric acid is also found on Japanese whaling ships, after Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has their way with them: Whale Wars.
Thank you for filling my mind with Barb’s loins, dinner in the wine box.
Maybe a meteorite hit some neighborhood and no one noticed except for the aroma.
I’m thinking of a line from the (non-Spielberg) 2005 “H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds”. The best thing in the film (aside from the illustrious C. Thomas Howell of course) was a line uttered by a woman at the edge of the meteorite crater — “It smells like ass.”
The walk from Haverford to Bryn Mawr required running a gauntlet of Ginko trees. All HC alumni know of the dreaded ginko berries. We took it as a warning to stay clear of Bryn Mawr ….
i blame bush!
the trick is to plant MALE gingkos that don’t drop the vomitrocious fruit…i used to live in adams morgan where it smelled of vomit every fall…now i live near lincoln park where the cum trees emanate the spunk odor each spring…how i love the city of trees!
Yeah, they smell like infected earwax, but I LOVE the golden gingko leaves in the fall. And the nuts, once cooked, are so good. Especially in certain Japanese dishes.