Around 1930-31 pistachio trees were attacked by a small beetle. The damage was severe, the young vegetation was destroyed and the trees looked sickly. The Aeginitans called this new enemy “The borer” or “The blinder”.

The famous Florentine plant disease specialist Lionello Petri, to whom they sent samples of the damaged plants, decided that it was all due to an insect called Acrantus vestitus that attacks weakened trees.

The plant specialist Professor Yiannis Sareyiannis visited Aegina in the August of 1930 and in a relevant publication wrote that the pistachio trees were laden with nuts, but hadn’t produced any leaves. He found that the leafage had fallen because of the fungal disease Septoria. This was the cause of the weakening of the trees which had then led to the attack by the Acrantus vestitus beetle.

The Acrantus vestitus beetle can be got rid of without the use of chemicals. Basically. all the dry branches – where the beetle lays its eggs – must be gathered together throughout the year, and burned. Today the “The borer” or “blinder” is not much of a threat to the Aegina pistachios.

During the 1920s the spread of the pistachio trees continued. Trees were planted on the Katsa estate at Vathi, amongst others. The demand for pistachio tree plants increased but there were no plant nurseries in Aegina. The Aeginitans got their plants from Attica and the Peloponnese.

The first large commercial nursery was established by Giorgos Fourtounas in 1925. Fourtounas had bought fields in Aegina at Limbones. Wanting to develop them he approached the Professor of Aboriculture of the Higher Agronomic Faculty in Athens, Panos Anagnostopoulo. Anagnostopoulos advised him to plant pistachio trees. Fourtounas then establised a large plant nursery. At first the trees he raised he used to fill the needs of his own estate. Later on however, he sold plants to the landowners of Aegina and other areas in Greece, as well as giving them away to his friends. This was Fourtounas’ great gift to Aegina: the production of pistachio tree plants at the time of an increase in demand. In Aegina large tracts were planted with trees from the Fourtouna nursery, which was largely responsible for the spread of the pistachio tree on the island. After his death in 1939 the nursery continued to be run by his widow, Panagiota, until 1960.

Peroglou, according to those who knew him, was very persuasive when he was trying to get landowners to cultivate pistachio trees. However, it’s not always easy for a landowner to abandon his traditional crops to plant a tree which they don’t know well. Which is the reason that the spread of the pistachio tree was very slow to start with.

Those who first copied Peroglou’s example were some Athenian friends who had estates or orchards in Aegina and had the financial wherewithal to do so. Among the first we find references to were: Alexandros Karapanos in Perivola; General Vasilakis Melas and his wife Eleni in Halikaki; G. Benizelos in Plakakia; and Panagiotis Giolman whose estate bordered on Peroglou’s.

The Aiginitan farmers were more cautious. There were some however who were persuaded. Panagiotis Galaris, also a neighbour of Peroglou, planted pistachio trees and would eventually sell his first few pistachios in Syros to the makers of Turkish-delight.

In 1910 Eleni Haimanda (nee Alifandi) planted a few pistachio saplings in her garden at Faros. The trees which resulted were grafted and became the large trees which are still around today. Following her example, in 1915, her husband Nikolis Haimandas went to Chios to get seeds. That seed was used to create his own plant nursery so that he could plant pistachio trees on his large estates. The newsaplings he then planted in his vineyards among the vines.

The first organised pistachio orchard in Aegina was established by Nikolao Peroglou in the area of Ag. Eirinas / Limbones, near the sea, in 1896. Peroglou had bought an area of around 20 stremmata (One stremma =1,000 square metres). The largest part of this estate was planted with various nut trees, among which were pistachios. The poor soil and the location near the sea meant that most of the trees didn’t flourish, with one notable exception: the pistachio trees. From then on he substituted all the other trees with pistachio trees.

The pistachio tree matures very slowly. When the trees had reached 12- 15 years of age, Peroglou saw that the pistachio was a tree with few needs and that the nuts sold for a good price. The dried pistachio nuts sold for 3 – 4 drachmas an oka, at a time when bread cost 75 lepta (there were 100 lepta in a drachma) an oka. Moreover, he realised that the climate and soil in Aegina were suitable for the tree’s development .

So he decided to dedicate himself to the cultivation of pistachio trees. In 1916 he published a small book entitled “The Pistachio Tree” which describes everything that the cultivation of the pistachio tree needs. It prompted the Aeginitans to plant pistachio trees, he shared cuttings from his best trees and when he wanted to give a present, he would give a pistachio tree sapling. There are still two such pistachio tree presents flourishing in Aegina.

We know that the pistachio tree is closely connected with Aegina, but we don’t know exactly when it arrived on the island.

The famous German botanist Theodor von Heldriech vistited Aegina six times during the 19th century. In his work the “Flora of Aegina” he refers to all the native plants which were discovered by him and earlier botanists. He also noted the plants which were cultivated in different areas (vines, olives, cereals, vegetables etc). But he doesn’t mention the pistachio tree. However that doesn’t mean that there weren’t some individual trees in some gardens which escaped his notice.

There is a version which says that the pistachio tree came to Aegina from Persia in 1867. It is also worth noting that in the Kypraiou estate there were some very old trees which an ancestor had brought from Chios, towards the end of the 19th century. One of those trees still survives today.

Latterly, in Aegina’s historical archives, Anna Yiannoulis found a document which is a serious indication that there were fruit-bearing pistachio trees in Aegina in 1896. The document is a summons sent by one Konstantinos Tsoumas against Vasileous Granitsa. Tsoumas states that he delivered to Granitsa 12 ‘okades’ (one oka was 1.282 kilos until it was discontinued in 1959) of pistachios for him to sell on his behalf at 4 drachmas an oka. After Granitsa sold them he should therefore give Tsoumas his share of 48 drachmas. Even though Granitsa sold them he refused to give the money to Tsoumas. From the summons it appears that it is a simple local transaction and the amount of nuts mentioned could have come from one or two productive trees in a garden.

There are no references to pistachios in Greece before the 19th century.
In 1838 the French naturalist Bory de Saint Vincent writes that he saw pistachio trees in Figaleia and in Pylos. In 1856 pistachio trees were also to be seen in Zakynthos. These were however individual trees, not plantations.
In 1860 the chocolate industry importer D. Pavlidis established the first organized pistachio nursery on his estate at Psychico. In 1869 Orfanidis started cultivating pistachio trees at the Municipal Nursery. Gennadios, who succeeded him in 1882, continued his work.
After the Second World War the pistachio trees began to spread in Greece. There was a sudden great expansion in pistachio cultivation between 1950 and 1960. Today there are pistachio nurseries in all of Greece, north and south, and in the islands.

In the 1st century A.D. Dioscorides Pedanius mentions that pistachios are produced in Syria and have pharmaceutical qualities. Dioscorides was the most distinguished pharmacologist of the ancient world. His book “Regarding Medical Matters” (De Materia Medica in the Latin translation) remained in use until the Middle Ages.
Pliny wrote in the 1st century A.D. that at the end of the reign of the Emperor Tiberius (around 30 B.C) the pistachio tree was introduced into Italy from Syria by Vittelius and the same year into Spain by Flaccus Pompeius..
In the 2nd century A.D. (131-200 ?) the famous Greek physician Galen of Pergamum mentions that the pistachios at Alexandria, and above all those at Verroia in Syria, are useful for the health of the liver.
In the 2nd century A.D. Athenaeus of Naucratis, who lived for the greater part of his life in Alexandria, in his work Deipnosophistai wrote that the pistachios that are served at the tables of the wise are produced in Syria and are exceptionally tasty.
Around 900 A.D. the Arabs took possession of Sicily from the Byzantines and introduced the cultivation of the pistachio, “grafting the wild ones to domesticate them” as it says in relevant texts.  
Cultivation extended over a wide area on the slopes of Mount Etna, which possessed the ideal combination of volcanic soil and favourable climatic conditions.

In his description of the pistachio tree Theophrastos does not give it a name. He says that Asian trees that are not to be found among the plants of Greece do not have names.
The first writer to use the word “pistakia” is the poet Nicander of Colophon (2nd century B.C.). Nicander also writes that “pistakia” are to be found in India and resemble almonds, adding that they have the quality of being able to protect one from scorpion bites. The word “pistakia” comes from the ancient Persian word “pista” meaning pistachio. This word is the root of the name for the pistachio in most languages: pistache (French), pistachio (English), pistashka (Russian), fustuk (Arabic).

The first writer to refer to the pistachio tree in the Greek language, and to describe it, was Theophrastos of Eresos In his work “The natural history of plants” he gives the following description of the pistachio tree: “It is said that a tree grows there (in India) resembling the turpentine tree. This is true of the leaves, the branches and other features apart from the fruit, which is different and similar to almonds. This tree is also said to grow in Bactria. Its nuts are the same size as almonds and look like almonds, but their shell is not rough and in taste they are superior to almonds, which is why in this place they are preferred to almonds.” As far as we know Theophrastos never went to Asia. He took his description of the pistachio tree from one of the historians who followed Alexander the Great on his Asian expedition.