Pine
Archimandrite Nikifor’s Biblical Encyclopedia
(Isa. 44:14)—one of the trees named in a passage ridiculing the making of idols from timber. The precise species represented by the Hebrew botanical term is uncertain. Pines and related conifers were valued for durable timber and fuel and grew in Lebanon and parts of Palestine. The encyclopedia’s observations about nineteenth-century groves near Beirut, Carmel, and Hebron belong to its period’s natural history.