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The Kia ora coo-ee : the magazine for the ANZACS in the Middle East, 1918

Trees of Palestine

Trees of Palestine.

If one could make a little forest of trees that grow in Palestine it would be beautiful enough for a Rosalind to wander in, and might even lure poets to its cool, green aisles in quest of dryads and fauns. There would be tall palms, olive trees with misty grey-green leaves, pomegranates, cedars of Lebanon, acacias, sturdy oaks, almonds, orange trees of Jaffa, myrtles, and a score of other species whose very names are pleasant.

The olive, mentioned so often in the Bible, is the most familiar of all Palestine's trees. It is grown chiefly for its fruit and oil, but the wood is in great demand for making "souvenirs of the Holy Land," little boxes, branded "Jerusalem" or ''Bethlehem," egg-cups, paper-knives, and many other objects more or less useless, that tourists and pilgrims buy eagerly and send overseas. Olive trees thrive in the valleys and cast wide shadows on rocky hill slopes where poppies glow like flakes of fire among grey old broken tombs.

Pomegranates are evidence of a good land, we have the word of Deuteronomy for that, and their fruit, which hangs like little red globes in the dusk of leaves, is preferred by epicures to that of the peach or apricot, which are both plentiful in Palestine. Walnut trees grow on the hill slopes of Hermon and Lebanon; the latter district is also the home of Cedrus libani, the cedar of Lebanon, one of the most beautiful trees in the world.

Wild varieties of the almond and the pear flourish in the Holy Land. Aaron's wonderful rod was cut from an almond tree, and it is the almond that weaves the first bridal veil of Spring. Shittim wood, used in building the Tabernacle, was probably obtained from the Acacia seyal, which also yields gum arabic; it grows around the Dead Sea, in company with A. nulotica or "burning bush."

Along the roadside sycamores tempt travellers to rest in the shade of spreading boughs. Then there are locust or carob trees, with shining dark green leaves and red flowers. Many shrubs and trees of Palestine produce gums and scents. Of this class are the storax tree, whose bark yields the stacte used in holy incense, and several kinds of Acacia. Lawsonia alba, the henna of the Arabs, has sweet-scented flowers, but is valued for its leaves, which are crushed to make the famous cosmetic.

That little forest of Fancy would contain, besides all the trees named, wild flowers in the sunny glades, poppies, blue irises, mountain lilies, and plants from the Valley of Roses.