The pistachio (, Pistacia vera), a member of the cashew family, is a small tree originating from an area that includes Afghanistan, Central Asia, and Iran. The tree produces seeds that are widely consumed as food. Etymology Pistachio is from late Middle English pistace, from Old French, superseded in the 16th century by forms from Italian pistacchio, via Latin from Greek pistákion, and from Middle Persian pistakē. History The pistachio tree is native to regions of Central Asia, including present-day Iran and Afghanistan. Archaeology shows that pistachio seeds were a common food as early as 6750 BC. The earliest evidence of pistachio consumption goes back to the Bronze Age Central Asia and comes from Djarkutan, modern Uzbekistan. Pistachio trees were introduced from Asia to Europe in the first century AD by the Romans. They are cultivated across Southern Europe and North Africa. Theophrastus described it as a terebinth-like tree with almond-like nuts from Bactria. It appears in Dioscorides' writings as pistákia (πιστάκια), recognizable as P. vera by its comparison to pine nuts. Pliny the Elder wrote in his Natural History that pistacia, "well known among us", was one of the trees unique to Syria, and that the seed was introduced into Italy by the Roman proconsul in Syria, Lucius Vitellius the Elder (in office in 35 AD) and into Hispania at the same time by Flaccus Pompeius. The early sixth-century manuscript De observatione ciborum (On the Observance of Foods) by Anthimus implies that pistacia remained well known in Europe in late antiquity. An article on pistachio tree cultivation was brought down in Ibn al-'Awwam's 12th-century agricultural work, Book on Agriculture. Archaeologists have found evidence from excavations at Jarmo in northeastern Iraq for the consumption of Atlantic pistachio. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were said to have contained pistachio trees during the reign of King Merodach-Baladan about 700 BCE. In the 19th century, the pistachio was cultivated commercially in parts of the English-speaking world, such as Australia and in the US in New Mexico and California, where it was introduced in 1854 as a garden tree. In 1904 and 1905, David Fairchild of the United States Department of Agriculture introduced hardier cultivars to California collected from China, but it was not promoted as a commercial crop until 1929. Walter T. Swingle's pistachios from Syria had already fruited well at Niles, California, by 1917. In 1969 and 1971, changes to the tax