huluppu tree

plural huluppu trees

1. A tree (species not definitively identified) that features in ancient Sumerian myth.

   Once upon a time there was a huluppu tree (perhaps a willow) which grew along the banks of the Euphrates, but the place of its origin was not good, for the South Wind tore at it from root to crown and the Euphrates flooded it.

   1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 181