Cypress

The Mediterranean or Italian cypress is a long-lived conifer native to the eastern Mediterranean and Iran, grown as an ornamental for thousands of years well outside that range, wherever summers run hot and dry. It can reach thirty-five metres, though most planted trees are slender upright cultivars whose dark columns mark the Mediterranean landscape. Its foliage is made of tiny scale-like leaves, its knobbly cones turn from green to brown over about two years, and some trees are thought to be more than a thousand years old. Few trees carry so much of death. Classical antiquity made it a sign of mourning: grieving Athenian households hung its boughs, it sweetened the air at cremations, and Ovid tells how Apollo's favourite Cyparissus, after killing a beloved stag, was turned into a cypress so that he might grieve forever. It remains the chief cemetery tree of Europe and the Muslim world. As an evergreen it also stood for immortality and long life. Iran held it sacred and linked it with Zoroaster, and Jewish tradition makes it the timber of Noah's ark. Kynes records cypress garlands laid on medieval coffins and a pair of trees planted as guardians of a home. Cunningham carries the wood to lengthen life, wears it at funerals to ease grief, and cuts a healing wand from a branch.