Was saying something that everyone knew it wasn't there. Seems odd, since we certainly knew. Seeds of the ginkgo that he collected were sent back to the Netherlands, and this was one of the first oriental trees widely grown in the west as an ornamental shade tree. Some accounts suggest that in Kaempfer's time fossil members of the ginkgo family were already known, though whether Kaempfer himself would have been familiar with this isn't clear. Since it has been cultivated for centuries, there is some dispute whether any original wild trees might still exist somewhere in the mountains of Eastern China.
Angiosperms are all the boring plants that people put in gardens, like cabbages and dahlias.
This plural is a bit odd, since there's only one species of ginkgo left now, but things were different in the days of the dinosaurs. There were many species then, with a range of leaf shapes. The biloba of this species name means that it is divided into two lobes, but in fact the depth of the division is quite variable. As you can see in the above backlit view, the most characteristic feature is the parallel veins - this particular leaf is almost a pure fan shape. The trees adopt a very independent attitude to turning.