The Newsletter of the AUB - Nature Conservation Center September, 2014 - August, 2015
Issue No. 35
Editorial In praise of the native During a visit to Baghdad in 2011, I was struck by the changes that had engulfed the city of my birth. People struggled to cope with everyday life; unending delays at checkpoints, the ever-present threat of car bombs and worst of all, the stifling reality of a segregated society in a city that was once known for the diversity of its citizens. I was in awe of the ability of people to adapt and endure, and their will to survive. Saddened as I was to witness human hardship, I was delighted to see the abundance of nabug trees (Ziziphus spina-christi, Arabic Sidr). A native of arid lands in the eastern Mediterranean, the nabug is a hardy tree that thrives in the summer when temperatures exceed 50 degrees centigrade. The hundred-year-old nabug tree in our garden has a canopy 18 meters wide. Its small leaves and lacy canopy filter just enough sunrays to maintain a cool shade in the summer and to trap the warmth of the rays of winter. The fruit is small-applelike with a taste favored by Baghdadis and not different from the Lebanese Ziziphus jujube known as innab. The
nabug is a blessed tree in the Quran, its thorny branches having been woven to form the crown of Christ. Iraqi folk tradition has it that bad fortune follows those who cut the tree and in the rare cases when a tree must be felled, alms are distributed to the poor in retribution. Myth and folk traditions thus protect the nabug tree, most probably because, before the British introduced the Australian gum tree (Eucalyptus spp.), it was among the only two trees that could withstand the hot urban environment, along with the date palm.