Photo: Andloukakis, CC BY-SA 4.0 (via Wikimedia Commons)
Italian Cypress
Cupressus sempervirens
Also known as Mediterranean Cypress, Tuscan Cypress, Pencil Pine, Graveyard Cypress
Key benefits
✦Traditional uses
✦Long before it lined Tuscan roads, the cypress was sacred to the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, who prized its rot-resistant wood for temple doors, ship keels, and coffins, and planted the tree itself as a quiet sentinel over graves. Mediterranean folk healers came to value the small gray cones for their tightening, astringent quality, simmering them into a decoction used as a soak for legs that felt heavy and swollen after a long day on foot. The fresh, resinous foliage was also gathered and steamed to clear a stuffy chest during the damp months, a practice still remembered in old Provençal and Italian household remedies. Even where its medicinal use faded, the cypress endured as a living symbol of steadfastness, mourning, and welcome shade.
How to grow & use it
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- ✦Witch hazel
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- ✦Horse chestnut
- ✦Juniper berries
- ✦Cedarwood
“For the hush of an old cemetery avenue at dusk, or a little steady comfort for legs that have carried you all day.”
The tree's name comes from the Greek myth of Cyparissus, a young man so consumed by grief after accidentally killing his beloved pet stag that the gods transformed him into a cypress tree so he could mourn forever, which is likely why the tree became the classic planting of cemeteries across the Mediterranean.
The essential oil should never be taken internally and should always be diluted before skin contact. It is traditionally avoided internally during pregnancy due to its reputation as a uterine stimulant, and its pollen is a well known trigger for hay fever and asthma.