κυπάρισσος

Greek kyparissos (κυπάρισσος) named both the tree and the mythological youth who was transformed into one. In Ovid's telling (Metamorphoses, ~8 CE), Cyparissos was a boy beloved by Apollo who accidentally killed his pet deer with a javelin. Grief-stricken, he asked the gods to let him mourn forever. They turned him into a cypress tree, and its sap became his tears.

The word may predate Greek. Some linguists trace it to a pre-Greek Mediterranean substrate language, possibly Semitic. Hebrew gopher (the wood of Noah's ark) has been speculatively connected, though the link is uncertain. What is certain is that cypress wood was prized across the ancient Mediterranean — durable, aromatic, and resistant to rot.

Romans planted cypresses at graves and temples. The tree's association with death and mourning spread across the Mediterranean world and has never faded. Italian cemeteries are still lined with Italian cypresses (Cupressus sempervirens). The tree's columnar shape — narrow, tall, pointing upward — became a visual synonym for grief in European painting from the Renaissance onward.

Van Gogh painted cypresses obsessively during his time in Saint-Remy-de-Provence in 1889. 'They are always occupying my thoughts,' he wrote to his brother Theo. 'It is as beautiful of line and proportion as an Egyptian obelisk.' The mourning tree of the ancient world became, for one painter, a shape so compelling it could not be ignored. The resin tears kept flowing.