The Smell That Ruins Korea's Prettiest Autumn Streets

Autumn streets in Korea are beautiful—but the season has a scent the photos don’t capture.

Golden ginkgo trees, an unfortunate seasonal smell, and a childhood memory from the other side of the world.

Every autumn, Korea's streets undergo a rather impressive transformation. Ginkgo trees that have spent most of the year blending into the scenery suddenly turn a brilliant shade of yellow. Their fan-shaped leaves gather along curbs, scatter across sidewalks, and make even ordinary intersections look unusually picturesque. For a few weeks, the trees are among the most beautiful things about the season.

Unfortunately, some of them smell terrible.

Beneath those golden branches, small, yellowish ginkgo seeds can accumulate on the pavement. Their fleshy outer coating produces an odor often compared to rancid butter, spoiled cheese, or vomit, none of which seem particularly appropriate for such an attractive tree. The smell becomes especially noticeable when the seeds are crushed beneath shoes or passing cars. Admiring the autumn foliage while carefully navigating the sidewalk is a familiar enough experience in Korea.

The trees themselves are known as 은행나무 (eunhaengnamu), and they're a common feature of Korean streets and parks. Ginkgos are remarkably resilient, tolerating the pollution and difficult growing conditions of urban environments while providing shade through the warmer months. Their brilliant autumn foliage is an added attraction, although the smell presents a less welcome seasonal complication.

Not every ginkgo tree produces it. Ginkgos have separate male and female trees, and only the female trees develop the fleshy seed structures responsible for the odor. The outer coating contains compounds including butyric acid, which also occurs in rancid butter. It's an unfortunate bit of chemistry for a tree otherwise so well suited to city life.

The problem is persistent enough that some Korean municipalities organize seasonal collection efforts, removing fallen seeds or harvesting them before they reach busy sidewalks. It's a practical response to an annual nuisance, although there's something faintly amusing about the amount of effort required to manage the less glamorous side of autumn's golden scenery.

What's less obvious is that the seeds aren't always considered something to get rid of.

Inside the unpleasant outer coating is an edible kernel known in Korean as 은행 (eunhaeng). Ginkgo nuts have a long history in East Asian cooking, appearing in Korean rice dishes and traditional preparations, as well as in Chinese and Japanese cuisines. Properly processed and cooked, they have a distinctive, slightly chewy texture. They also require caution: ginkgo nuts contain naturally occurring toxins, and even cooked kernels can cause poisoning when consumed in excessive quantities, particularly by children.

The contrast between the foul-smelling exterior and the edible kernel gives ginkgo seeds an unusual place in everyday life. What creates a maintenance problem for a city can also be a familiar ingredient to someone who knows how it's traditionally prepared.

Growing up in the United States, I remember going out with my mom and family friends to collect fallen ginkgo seeds from the sidewalk. I can't recall where we went or how the seeds were prepared afterward, but I remember eating the cooked nuts with toothpicks. They were chewy, and that small detail has stayed with me more clearly than the rest of the outing.

It was an ordinary enough activity at the time, although perhaps not to everyone passing by. While some pedestrians would have preferred to avoid the fallen seeds, we had gone out specifically to gather them.

Ginkgo trees are not exclusive to Korea. Native to China, they've been cultivated across East Asia for centuries and planted widely in cities around the world, including the United States. The same tree can be admired for its autumn color in one place, complained about for its smell in another, or recognized for the food hidden inside its seeds. Sometimes all three reactions occur on the same sidewalk.

My mom and her friends were Korean immigrants raising families in America. Whether collecting ginkgo seeds reminded them of home, I can't say. I never thought to ask. But they recognized something familiar growing in a place far from where they'd grown up, and gathering it was an experience they could share.

These days, I encounter ginkgo trees in Korea, where their golden leaves are celebrated and their fallen seeds are often treated as a nuisance. The smell is no more appealing here than it would have been on an American sidewalk. And yet, the sight of those scattered seeds brings back an entirely different scene: my mom and her friends collecting them, and the cooked nuts we later ate with toothpicks.

Autumn photographs tend to capture the golden canopy, not what's happening beneath it. But the sidewalks have their own stories, including the ones that begin with something most people would rather not step on.