Cedar

The cedar of Lebanon, Cedrus libani, also called Lebanon or Lebanese cedar, is a large conifer of the pine family, Pinaceae, native to the mountains of the eastern Mediterranean in Lebanon, western Syria and south-central Turkey, with a variety on Cyprus. It can reach forty metres, with a massive trunk, needles in clusters along short shoots, and upright barrel-shaped cones that ripen from green to grey-brown. Its wood is fine-grained, yellow, fragrant and very durable, and resists insects. The tree appears in the Epic of Gilgamesh, whose heroes travel to a cedar forest to fell it, and often in the Bible: Moses ordered priests to treat leprosy with its bark, and Solomon built the Temple in Jerusalem with its timber. The Phoenicians built ships of it and traded it across the ancient world, and it is now the national emblem of Lebanon. Centuries of felling have left only remnants of the old forests, and large replanting schemes are under way in Turkey and Lebanon. Across the Middle East cedar wood was burned as a sacred offering, the Egyptians made perfume and incense from the resin and used cedar in embalming, and the Romans carved statues of gods and ancestors from the wood. Magical tradition burns it to purify and to banish bad dreams, hangs it in the house against lightning, keeps a piece in a purse to draw money, and burns it to awaken psychic powers.