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 open, sparse and gangly when young, this tough hybrid matures into a symmetrically-rounded large tree with excellent summer shade potential. With its outstanding reddish new growth, yellow to orange late fall to winter 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.