Pronounciation: Pis-TA-cee-a at-lan-TEE-ca

Hardiness zones
Sunset 8-24
USDA 8-11

Landscape Use: Mount Atlas pistache is a really nice underutilized mesic shade tree. Great for parks, urban greenspaces, or residential or commercial landscapes. Also, makes a truly unique bonsai tree.

Form & Character: Rugged, visually imposing tree having an umbrella shaped and symmetrical crown architecture, mesic, 'tough guy' shade tree.

Growth Habit: Deciduous, woody, broadleaf perennial tree, moderately slow when young to moderately fast with age to 60-feet tall with equal spread. Trunk character is gray and ridged and furrowed, rather than brown and shedding like Pistacia chinensis.

Foliage/Texture: Pinnately-compound foliage, 7 to 11 pairs of leaflets, 2- to 4-inches long to 3/4-inch wide, yellow late fall or early winter color, leaves appear in spring earlier than Pistacia chinensis and are also smaller and thicker; medium coarse texture.

Flowers & Fruits: Dioecious (unisexual), flowers in winter when deciduous, male flowers in compound racemes, females flowers in panicles, both reddish, catkin like, fruit on female tree a globose drupe turns bright red then blue.

Seasonal Color: Mostly yellow late fall color.

Temperature: Somewhat more heat tolerant than Pistacia chinensis.

Light: Full sun

Soil: Well drained, avoid caliche.

Watering: Irrigate regular and deeply, but it will take more drought than Pistacia chinensis.

Pruning: Elevate canopy base slowly over time to 10 to 12 feet above grade.

Propagation: Softwood cuttings and seed.

Disease and Pests: Verticillium wilt and chestnut blight resistant.

Additional comments: Mount Atlas pistache is more heat tolerant with less dramatic yellow fall color and slightly finer texture than its more popular cousin, Pistacia chinensis. Despite having an inferiority complex, it's a wonderful tree (because of its toughness) with exquisitely ridged and furrowed bark characteristics. During mild winters, this fine tree might not become deciduous. Overall, this is a very fine tree that should be used more in difficult Phoenix landscape sites.

The popular cultivar 'Red Push' is a hybrid cross between Pistacia atlantica and Pistacia integerrima. Though often gangly when young, this tough hybrid taxa matures into a symmetrically-rounded large tree with excellent summer shade potential. With its outstanding reddish new growth, yellow to orange fall color, and verticillium wilt resistance, this marvelous tree hybrid is both non-allergenic and long-lived.

An ethnobotanical note: Pistacia atlantica once extensively covered mountainous regions of the Middle East and its fruit is mentioned as having been given by Jacob as a gift to the leader of Egypt (Genesis 37:25). In its native habitat it has been overharvested as a source of wood.