Can you tell me if Acacia trees grow in Seattle? Could I obtain a small cut branch from one? I am a funeral director, and the last wishes of the deceased we will be burying were to have a sprig of acacia placed inside the casket. This man was very active in the Freemasons, and evidently the acacia is an important symbol for them.
Most Acacia species are marginally hardy in our area. According to local tree expert Arthur Lee Jacobson, most gardeners who plant Acacia end up with a large pile of exotic firewood once the trees have died off during a serious winter. Therefore, your most likely source for a cut sprig would be to ask local florists, who obtain this plant regularly for use in flower arrangements. You can also contact the source the florists use, Seattle Wholesale Growers Market (where they will order it from California).
In Freemasonry, acacia symbolizes the soul’s immortality, perhaps because of the evergreen foliage. The book of Exodus in the Hebrew bible seems to have been the inspiration for choosing this tree, called shitta [singular] or shittim [plural]. According to the text, the wood was the raw material for the Tabernacle and its contents, the Ark of the Covenant, the Altar and the Table and the Pillars of the Curtain. Biblical botany scholar Lytton Musselman speculates in his book Figs, Dates, Laurel, and Myrrh (Timber Press, 2007) that the species might have been Acacia albida, now renamed Faidherbia albida. However, the masonic texts have another view. According to Mackey’s Encyclopedia of Freemasonry, “It is the acacia vera of Tournefort [refers to 17th century French botanist Joseph Pitton de Tournefort], and the mimosa nilotica of Linnæus. It grew abundantly in the vicinity of Jerusalem, where it is still to be found, and is familiar to us all, in its modern uses at least, as the tree from which the gum arabic of commerce is obtained.”