Article from Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles
Recommended citation
'Pistacia terebinthus' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.
A deciduous tree up to 30 ft or more high, sometimes a bush, with pinnate leaves up to 8 in. long; rachis is not winged. Leaflets usually seven or nine, ovate-lanceolate to oblong, 11⁄2 to 21⁄2 in. long, mucronate at the apex, entire, dark green, above, paler beneath, glabrous. Flowers in panicles 2 to 6 in. long, small, greenish. Fruits roundish oval, about 3⁄8 in. long, turning first red, finally purplish brown.
Native of the Canary Islands, N. Africa, and S. Europe eastward to N.W. Anatolia; in France it extends as far north as Chambery in the Savoy, and in Italy to the South Tyrol, but its main distribution is near the shores of the Mediterranean; in cultivation 1656. It is hardy at Kew, where there is a specimen measuring 45 × 21⁄2 ft (1967). The flowers have no beauty, but the leaves have a pleasant resinous odour.
The bark of this species yields a resinous liquid known originally as terebinthine – a word which became corrupted to ‘turpentine’ and was then extended in meaning to denote the oil obtained from the resins of various conifers, notably pines.
subsp. palaestina (Boiss.) Engl. P. palaestina Boiss. – Leaves even-pinnate, or the terminal leaflet much smaller than the lateral ones, or reduced to a bristle; lateral leaflets acuminate. This has a more eastern distribution than the typical state of the species.
Although the source of terebinthine (turpentine), it is doubtful whether this species was ever much cultivated for this purpose, except perhaps on marginal soils. It is, however, used as the stock on which to graft P. vera, the pistachio, and this may explain its presence on formerly cultivated ground.