Botany
Cupressaceae
This tree was described for the first time in 1415, but it was already known during Roman times.
It is a majestic, evergreen tree with a columnar structure and dark green foliage with scaly leaves. The cypress has male and female elements on the same tree. Male cones are 3 mm long, oval in shape and greenish in color, and are located on the tip of the twigs. Female cones are 3-4 cm in diameter, greenish in color that with maturation first become dark red-brown and then gray. In popular culture, “male” and “female” cypresses are recognizable because there are two varieties: the “pyramidalis” variety (called male cypress) characterized by branches very close to the trunk forming the typical tapered foliage, while the “horizontalis or fastigiata” variety (called female cypress) with branches inserted into the trunk almost at right angles and often arranged in distinct antlers.
History
Due to the robustness and compactness of its wood, it is used to make furniture, and oils with balsamic properties are extracted from its twigs and fruits. St. Francis’ cypress at Verucchio, in the province of Rimini, has a plaque that reads: Planted by St. Francis in 1213. 800 years old. Base circumference 530 cm. Height 25 mt. According to tree experts, it is also a rarity. Legend has it that Francis wanted to burn his stick or cord to get warm, but the stick or cord did not burn. Then Francis said, “If you don’t want to burn, grow.” And the cypress has been growing over the last 800 years. Today, the tree is still standing after losing its top and thanks also to three “crutches”. The trunk is tied with iron wire and a rusty belt to limit the damage that, in the 1800s, the Napoleonic army had done by setting it on fire. This cypress, we read in today’s newspapers, has been cloned to donate it to the current Pope Francis. A 40-centimeter-high plant has grown, a direct descendant of the cypress that St. Francis planted 800 years ago. What would the Tuscan landscape be without the more or less slender shapes of isolated cypresses next to peasant farmhouses, or gathered in groves on top of the Sienese hills, or planted in double rows leading to the splendid Medici villas or medieval castles? Yet, this tree, so familiar to the Tuscans’ eyes, is originally from Asia and Crete, although it was already cultivated and naturalized in Roman times.
The Tree at Castelgandolfo
In the Gardens, the cypress is used both as an isolated tree, and in rows to outline majestic avenues (Avenue of the Roses, or near the obelisk, or alternating with hedges of holm oak and lentage), and to form medium-high or high hedges. The main feature of cypresses (almost all from the pyramidalis variety) placed in the Gardens of Castel Gandolfo is their “combing”, a sort of light pruning that makes its foliage very tapered and velvety to the eye.
General symbolism
The morphological and physiological features of the cypress have contributed to making it a champion of religious symbolism. It has a very slender shape, and therefore it is a symbol of an ongoing tension towards Heaven. It is an evergreen plant, a symbol of immortality, and therefore signifies the Grace of the Lord and the Salvation brought about by Christ. It can have a very long life and be surrounded by an “aura” of wisdom that only the great patriarchs who live hundreds of years can afford to have. These features have made the cypress tree the tree of Spiritual Life, “I am like an evergreen cypress, from me fruit will be found for you” (Hos 14:9). Again in the Old Testament, in Isaiah 55:13, we read “In place of the thornbush, the cypress shall grow, instead of nettles, the myrtle.”
For St. Thomas Aquinas, it is a symbol of the Prophets and Patriarchs (2nd century). According to St. Ambrose, protector of Milan, the cypress symbolizes Apostolic Grace (4th century). According to St. Gregory the Great (6th century), the elect in Paradise. In the 8th century, it was a symbol of the Virgin Mary, of the Church, of Christ, and of the blessed souls in Paradise in the 12th century. Such an important tree from a natural and symbolic perspective, and having been depicted several times in images of paradise, it was planted near Christian tombs as a sign of hope in the afterlife and represented on sarcophagi. It was also used in fences for its ability to repel spells.
Medicinal importance
The most important active ingredients, contained in galbuli (fruits) and twigs with leaves, are tannins, flavonoids, alcohols, and essential oils. Cypress is balsamic, anti-inflammatory for the respiratory tract, astringent, venous decongestant and toning for capillaries.
It is also used in healing and mildly antiseptic douches.
In addition to essential oil, the most used ointments are the Fluid Extract and the Cypress Mother Tincture.
The Tree in the Pope mission
“Many times,” the Holy Father observed (Message of the Holy Father Francis for World Mission Sunday 2024, 02.02.2024), “we end up being an ‘imprisoning’ Church that does not let the Lord out, that keeps him as ‘its own’, whereas the Lord came for mission and wants us to be missionaries.” Cypress, an evergreen tree, contains the symbolism of a Church that will be forever, that can change over time, but it will never lose its drive “ad gentes”, by virtue of its apostolic grace. Its slender shape then suggests the upward tension of the Church’s teaching, its roots are well founded on earth, but its foliage reaches out towards heaven, the ultimate goal!