There ’s something magical about a conifer . Long after the ontogenesis of phytology as a science that explains why some trees shed their leaves each fall and some remain evergreen , we bring pines and slick up indoors at year conclusion to symbolize light and raw birth . The cypress , native to the sphere where civilization set about , has its own account of meaning and symbolism .

Identification

Cupressus sempervirens , the Mediterranean or Italian cypress tree , is a aboriginal conifer of the Eastern Mediterranean , the rocker of westerly civilisation . It grow 20 to 30 feet tall , with aromatic wood and scaled parting . Cypresses are long - lived trees ; according to Iranian legend , the cypress tree diagram of Kashmar , planted by Zoroaster , lived 1,405 class , according to Rozaneh Magazine . In the United States the Italian cypress is hardy from USDA zone seven to zone nine .

Significance

Although the cypress sept contains other cultivars , the Mediterranean cypress tree is a tree that was present where westerly lit and religion lead off ; it seem in the " Shahnameh , " a Iranian heroic poem by Ferdowsi ( 940 - 1020 ) . Amots Dafni , Efraim Lev , Sabine Beckmann , and Christian Eichberger , in " Ritual Plants of Muslim Graveyards in Northern Israel , " report that the cypress tree was planted around graveyards as a representation of both death and the immortality of the soul .

Evolution

A summary of the significance of coniferous tree in human culture issue by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization ( FAOUN ) lists several legend and associations that helped base the cypress tree as a Manichaean representative of death and immortality . A pass away Adam implore his Logos to bring oil from Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden to him ; the male child was too late but implant a teddy on Adam ’s tomb where a tree maturate with branches of cypress , cedar and European olive tree . These three woods made up the cross upon which Christ would go . In Ovid ’s " Metamorphosis , " a early days identify Kyparissos pass away and is transformed into a cypress tree .

Middle Ages

During the European Middle Ages , legends and myth evolved as cultures commute ; through its tie-up with Adam and Jesus , the cypress tree tree became a strong Christian symbol . FAOUN reports that the entry doors of St. Peter ’s basilica were originally carved of cypress tree . During the Middle Ages , years of pest and instability , the elusive treble symbolism of end and Resurrection of Christ simplified into the more concrete concept of death .

Art and the Cypress

Renaissance artist used emblematic object to pass along with an audience that was mostly illiterate . afterwards , during the Victorian era , the cypress tree with its sorry branches and tall columnar material body was a symbolization of the necropolis and death and was widely planted in European as well as Middle Eastern burying ground . The nineteenth hundred artist Van Gogh may have preserved the symbolism in a painting that he completed during his arrest in the south of France in 1890 ; the cypress tree occupies a central position in the famous " route with Cypress and Star , " reaching from earth to the heavens .

References

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