This past week, two prominent web–first web-only outfits vented over the pervasive poop smell invading major power corridors of our city. The poop smell comes from ginkgo trees. Wonkette was the first to bitch. DCist questioned its army of readers about it. Readers described the smell as “vomit,” and referred to the trees as “jizz trees.” Awesome.
Cap Hill and Dupont Circle have been overrun with the jizz. The obsession was more than justified. And this morning, the Post has a great reported expose on Ginkgogate. Apparently, arborists have made the problem worse. In an attempt to mask the smell, they injected 1,000 ginkgo trees with a chemical to prevent them from producing the smelly fruit. They failed.
In fact, the arborists made the smell worse:
“The chemical didn’t work, for reasons that scientists still don’t understand. Now, instead of less ginkgo stink, Washington has its worst case in years — a bumper crop of nastiness that is studding sidewalks and sliming dress shoes from Capitol Hill to Kalorama.”