Oman’s living green heritage

God has endowed Oman with a diverse flora, where craggy hills mingle with the plains and the sea, featuring breathtaking plants and trees that captivate visitors with their exquisite beauty and diversity.
During my numerous trips in the mountains, wadis and beaches of this stunning country, I encountered many exceptional plants and trees.
In Al Jabal Al Akhdhar, I could admire the majestic multi-century-old juniper trees (Aalaalan), Olea Europaea (Aatm), Sideroxylon mascatense (Boot) and Acacia Gerardii (Talh).
The juniper tree, Juniperus polycarpos, commonly known as Persian juniper, is a species native to western Asia.

Some authorities classify it as a subspecies or variety of Juniperus excelsa. It has extremely hard wood that people in the past used in the construction of their homes and structures of trails in the mountains. The juniper’s lifespan is between 350 and 750 years and can rarely reach a thousand years.
Around 20 years ago, I had the chance to meet a young scientific woman from New Zealand working for EarthWatch who came to Oman to study the juniper trees in Al Jabal Al Akhdhar.
She told me that the oldest one was probably more than a thousand years old but unfortunately was dying because the road built next to it acted like a dam, collecting water after the rain and causing the rotting of its roots!

The juniper tree is one of the perennial trees of Oman and can reach more than 20 metres in height with a trunk exceeding 1.5 metres in diameter. The smoke of the burning juniper berries repels insects and reptiles.
The Boot, Sideroxylon mascatense, is a perennial shrub or a small tree, usually growing 7 to 10 metres tall and occasionally recorded as a medium-sized tree up to 15 metres high.
We can also find it in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Sideroxylon mascatense was formerly the characteristic tree in the montane semi-evergreen woodlands of the Musandam Peninsula in northernmost Oman and the United Arab Emirates, but livestock grazing and over-harvesting timber and firewood have degraded the peninsula’s montane woodlands.
These trees can be found in Al Jabal Al Akhdhar and Jabal Shams. During the first months of summer, they produce small dark purple to black berries with a maximum diameter of 1 cm, containing a big seed inside and a delicious sweet flesh.

People living in the mountains sell them on the side of the road during the season.
Olea Europaea (Aatm) is also a perennial tree that produces very small olives that are not edible. Omanis use the wood of these olive trees to make their traditional sticks.
In Hail Al Masbit, I saw massive Aatm trees more than 10 metres tall with a span of not less than 12 metres!
Acacia Gerardii (Talh) is another tree found in the Al Hajar mountains. The tree blooms in late spring and the beginning of summer, so one can smell its delicious perfume from a distance and the bees produce delicious honey from the flowers.