Podcast Script
The tree in front of you is called the Chinese Pistache. It belongs to the family Anacardiaceae, and its scientific name is Pistacia chinensis. The average adult Chinese Pistache tree grows up to 60 feet tall with a canopy width of around 25 to 35 feet, but the trees on the Davis High School campus are generally a bit smaller.
Take a look at the leaves. The Chinese Pistache is known for its brilliant fall colors, ranging from yellow to red-orange. In summer, leaves are generally a medium green. What you might think is a leaf is actually a leaflet, and each leaf is comprised of 10 to 12 leaflets. The leaflets are characterized by lanceolate leaf shape, meaning that they taper to a point, and opposite leaflet arrangement within one leaf. The leaf itself is characterized by alternate leaf arrangement.
Now take a look at the trunk. The ashy brown outer bark peels to reveal salmon-colored inner bark. The thick durable bark of the Chinese Pistache protects it from wind, extreme temperatures, decay, and injury. These adaptations make this tree suitable for many different environments, including areas with rocky, dry, or highly alkaline soils. The Chinese Pistache is native to China, the Philippine Islands, and Taiwan, but has been introduced in many other areas across the globe like Europe and the United States.
Chinese Pistache trees are dioecious, meaning that there are separate male and female trees. The female trees can be distinguished from the male trees because they have small red flowers growing off a panicle that is about 7 to 9 inches long. Male flowers are small, green and not very showy, and they grow from 2 to 3 inch panicles. Female trees also have small fruits called drupes, which are a single seed surrounded by a fleshy covering. These fruits are dark red when ripe, which is generally in October, and attract birds and small rodents, which is the tree’s mechanism of seed dispersal. Female trees only produce fruit when there are male trees nearby to produce pollen. There are both male and female trees on the DHS campus.
Chinese Pistache are fairly low maintenance: they require very little water and tolerate drought well. They can survive in most types of soil, as well as extreme heat and freezing temperatures. They generally do best in direct sunlight. Chinese Pistache are commonly planted in residential areas and parking lots because they make excellent shade trees.
An interesting fact about Chinese Pistache is that these trees are commonly used as the understock for grafting commercial pistachio trees. Thanks for listening to my podcast, I hope you learned something!

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