Gardeners performing an "operation" on a 1,000 years old ginkgo tree in Beijing's Daxing District on Monday, October 22, 2007. [Photo:bjd.com.cn]

Botanical experts gathered Monday in Beijing's southern district of Daxing on a consultation for protecting a 1,000 years old ginkgo tree, Beijing Evening News reported.

After a series of health checks, the experts from the eighteen disctricts and countries of Beijing decided to perform an "operation" on the tree, considering there is barely any leaves on some of its branches and part of its trunk is hollow.

Gardeners disinfested and foliar-fed the tree and also fertilized the soil at its feet.

The old tree grown from China's ancient Han Dynasty has been dubbed by local people the "King of Ginkgo". It has such a thick trunk that it takes five adults to encircle it hand in hand.

Beijing has over 40,000 such old trees of precious species among which the oldest ones date back to the Han (202 B.C.-220 A.D.) and Tang (618-907) dynasties, says Yin Junjie, an official from Beijing Municipal Bureau of Landscape and Forestry.

Yin also says there are two major factors endangering the health of these trees, one is the dry weather and the other is the excessive construction in the city.

To better protect these "living cultural relics", the authorities have allocated millions to improve their conditions, the newspaper says.