Pistacia atlanticaDesf.

Mt. Atlas mastic tree

WFO wfo-0000394548 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Pistacia atlantica, photographed by Alessia Guggisberg
fig. a Alessia Guggisberg, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-26 / obs. 200839887
Pistacia atlantica, photographed by Mary K. Hanson
fig. b Mary K. Hanson, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 194044624
Pistacia atlantica, photographed by John Lyden
fig. c John Lyden, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 179405959
Pistacia atlantica, photographed by Eleftherios Katsillis
fig. d Eleftherios Katsillis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 174598638
Pistacia atlantica, photographed by Eleftherios Katsillis
fig. e Eleftherios Katsillis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 119018416
Pistacia atlantica, photographed by Eleftherios Katsillis
fig. f Eleftherios Katsillis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 115441354
Pistacia atlantica, photographed by Dennis Eckhart
fig. g Dennis Eckhart, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 84603291
Pistacia atlantica, photographed by Dennis Eckhart
fig. h Dennis Eckhart, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 81836136

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
1002990
Filed as
Pistacia atlantica Desf.
Det. by
J. de D. Muñoz 1983-01-01
Collected
S. L. Welsh 1981-10-08
Origin
US
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 22 botanical countries

Regions where Pistacia atlantica is native: Algeria, Canary Is., Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Afghanistan, Cyprus, East Aegean Is., Iran, Iraq, Lebanon-Syria, North Caucasus, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Sinai, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, Pakistan, West Himalaya, Greece, Krym, Türkiye-in-Europe AlgeriaLibyaMoroccoTunisiaAfghanistanCyprusEast Aegean Is.IranIraqLebanon-SyriaNorth CaucasusPalestineSaudi ArabiaSinaiTranscaucasusTürkiyePakistanWest HimalayaGreeceKrymTürkiye-in-Europe Canary Is.
Native distribution of Pistacia atlantica, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Afghanistan AFG ASIA-TEMPERATE
Cyprus CYP
East Aegean Is. EAI
Iran IRN
Iraq IRQ
Lebanon-Syria LBS
North Caucasus NCS
Palestine PAL
Saudi Arabia SAU
Sinai SIN
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Canary Is. CNY
Libya LBY
Morocco MOR
Tunisia TUN
Greece GRC EUROPE
Krym KRY
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
Pakistan PAK ASIA-TROPICAL
West Himalaya WHM

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Where it actually grows measured, from 617 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -2.4 °C 4.2 °C 13.8 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 23.8 °C 31.0 °C 35.8 °C
Annual rainfall 99 mm 562 mm 863 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 1 mm 7 mm 110 mm

It is found where winters bring light frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 617 research-grade observations of Pistacia atlantica that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.

Also published as 8 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Lentiscus atlantica Kuntze
  • Lentiscus musica Kuntze
  • Pistacia atlantica var. mutica Rech.f.
  • Pistacia cabulica Stocks
  • Pistacia chia Desf.
  • Pistacia choulettei Gand.
  • Pistacia mutica Fisch. & C.A.Mey.
  • Terebinthus atlanticus (Desf.) Dum.Cours.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.