When Adam was dying at the age of 900, he sent Eve and their son Seth back to Eden to beg the angel guarding the entrance for the oil of mercy to anoint him in his illness. St. Michael appeared to them, saying it was time for Adam to die, and the oil could not be obtained until the crucifixion. Instead, he gave Seth wood from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and said that when that wood flowered, Adam would be saved. From this wood came the wood of the cross, and at the crucifixion it bloomed.
In another version of the story, St. Michael gave Seth three seeds from the forbidden fruit and told him to place them under his father’s tongue when he was buried. From these seeds grew a cypress, an olive, and a cedar tree which were all eventually used to make the cross.
These early legends, later incorporated into medieval versions of the pseudepigraphal Life of Adam and Eve and other texts, are part of a strong tradition identifyi…