Commonly known as the cedar of Lebanon, this is a large, evergreen tree and one of the more historic trees on campus. Records from the ancient kingdom of Sumer tell of the warrior-king Gilgamesh building his city out of wood harvested from Cedrus libani. Records of attempts to protect and ensure the cultivation of Cedrus libani go as far back as when the Roman emperor Hadrian designated the native range of C. libani to be a national administrative zone, where the harvesting of wood from the trees was made illegal.
