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The olive, botanical name ''Olea europaea'', meaning 'European olive' in Latin, is a species of small tree or shrub in the family Oleaceae, found traditionally in the Mediterranean Basin. When in shrub form, it is known as ''Olea europaea'' 'Montra', dwarf olive, or little olive. The species is cultivated in all the countries of the Mediterranean, as well as in Australia, New Zealand, North and South America and South Africa. ''Olea europaea'' is the type species for the genus '' Olea''.

The olive's fruit, also called an "olive", is of major agricultural importance in the Mediterranean region as the source of olive oil; it is one of the core ingredients in Mediterranean cuisine. The tree and its fruit give their name to the plant family, which also includes species such as lilac, jasmine, forsythia, and the true ash tree.
Thousands of cultivars of the olive tree are known. Olive cultivars may be used primarily for oil, eating, or both. Olives cultivated for consumption are generally referred to as "table olives". About 90% of all harvested olives are turned into oil, while about 10% are used as table olives.

Etymology

The word ''olive'' derives from Latin ' ("olive fruit", "olive tree"), possibly through Etruscan 𐌀𐌅𐌉𐌄𐌋𐌄 (''eleiva'') from the archaic Proto-Greek form *ἐλαίϝα (*''elaíwa'') ( Classic Greek ', "olive fruit", "olive tree"). The word ''oil'' originally meant "olive oil", from ', (', "olive oil"). Also in multiple other languages the word for "oil" ultimately derives from the name of this tree and its fruit. The oldest attested forms of the Greek words are the Mycenaean , ', and , ' or , ', written in the Linear B syllabic script.

Description

The olive tree, ''Olea europaea'', is an evergreen tree or shrub native to Mediterranean Europe, Asia, and Africa. It is short and squat and rarely exceeds in height. 'Pisciottana', a unique variety comprising 40,000 trees found only in the area around Pisciotta in the Campania region of southern Italy, often exceeds this, with correspondingly large trunk diameters. The silvery green leaves are oblong, measuring long and wide. The trunk is typically gnarled and twisted.

The small, white, feathery flowers, with ten-cleft calyx and corolla, two stamens, and bifid stigma, are borne generally on the previous year's wood, in racemes springing from the axils of the leaves.

The fruit is a small drupe long when ripe, thinner-fleshed and smaller in wild plants than in orchard cultivars. Olives are harvested in the green to purple stage. Canned black olives have sometimes been artificially blackened and may contain the chemical ferrous gluconate to improve the appearance. ''Olea europaea'' contains a pyrena commonly referred to in American English as a "pit", and in British English as a "stone".

Taxonomy

The six natural subspecies of ''Olea europaea'' are distributed over a wide range:

*''Olea europaea'' subsp. ''europaea'' (Mediterranean Basin)
**''Olea europaea'' var. ''sylvestris'', considered the "wild" olive of the Mediterranean, is a variety characterized by a smaller tree bearing noticeably smaller fruit.
* ''O. e.'' subsp. ''cuspidata'' (from South Africa throughout East Africa, Arabia to Southwest China)
*''O. e.'' subsp. ''cerasiformis'' (Madeira); also known as ''Olea maderensis''
*''O. e.'' subsp. ''guanchica'' (Canary Islands)
*''O. e.'' subsp. ''laperrinei'' (Algeria, Sudan, Niger)
*''O. e.'' subsp. ''maroccana'' (Morocco)

The subspecies ''O. e. cerasiformis'' is tetraploid, and ''O. e. maroccana'' is hexaploid. Wild-growing forms of the olive are sometimes treated as the species ''Olea oleaster'', or "oleaster." The trees referred to as "white" and "black" olives in Southeast Asia are not actually olives but species of ''Canarium''.

Cultivars

Hundreds of cultivars of the olive tree are known. An olive's cultivar has a significant impact on its color, size, shape, and growth characteristics, as well as the qualities of olive oil. Olive cultivars may be used primarily for oil, eating, or both. Olives cultivated for consumption are generally referred to as "table olives".

Since many olive cultivars are self-sterile or nearly so, they are generally planted in pairs with a single primary cultivar and a secondary cultivar selected for its ability to fertilize the primary one. In recent times, efforts have been directed at producing hybrid cultivars with qualities useful to farmers, such as resistance to disease, quick growth, and larger or more consistent crops.

History

Mediterranean Basin

Fossil evidence indicates the olive tree had its origins 20–40 million years ago in the Oligocene, in what is now corresponding to Italy and the eastern Mediterranean Basin. Around 100,000 years ago, olives were used by humans in Africa, on the Atlantic coast of Morocco, for fuel management and most probably for consumption. Wild olive trees, or oleasters, were present and collected in the Eastern Mediterranean since ~19,000 BP. The genome of cultivated olives reflects their origin from oleaster populations in the Eastern Mediterranean. The olive plant was first cultivated some 7,000 years ago in Mediterranean regions.

For thousands of years olives were grown primarily for lamp oil, with little regard for culinary flavor. Its origin can be traced to the Levant based on written tablets, olive pits, and wood fragments found in ancient tombs. As far back as 3000 BC, olives were grown commercially in Crete; they may have been the source of the wealth of the Minoan civilization.

The ancestry of the cultivated olive is unknown. Fossil '' olea'' pollen has been found in Macedonia and other places around the Mediterranean, indicating that this genus is an original element of the Mediterranean flora. Fossilized leaves of ''olea'' were found in the palaeosols of the volcanic Greek island of Santorini and dated to about 37,000 BP. Imprints of larvae of olive whitefly '' Aleurobus olivinus'' were found on the leaves. The same insect is commonly found today on olive leaves, showing that the plant-animal co-evolutionary relations have not changed since that time. Other leaves found on the same island are dated back to 60,000 BP, making them the oldest known olives from the Mediterranean.

Outside the Mediterranean

Olives are not native to the Americas. Spanish colonists brought the olive to the New World, where its cultivation prospered in present-day Peru, Chile, and Argentina. The first seedlings from Spain were planted in Lima by Antonio de Rivera in 1560. Olive tree cultivation quickly spread along the valleys of South America's dry Pacific coast where the climate was similar to the Mediterranean. Spanish missionaries established the tree in the 18th century in California. It was first cultivated at Mission San Diego de Alcalá in 1769 or later around 1795. Orchards were started at other missions, but in 1838, an inspection found only two olive orchards in California. Cultivation for oil gradually became a highly successful commercial venture from the 1860s onward.

In Japan, the first successful planting of olive trees happened in 1908 on Shodo Island, which became the cradle of olive cultivation in Japan.

An estimated 865 million olive trees were in the world as of 2005, and the vast majority of these were found in Mediterranean countries, with traditionally marginal areas accounting for no more than 25% of olive-planted area and 10% of oil production.

Symbolic connotations

Olive oil has long been considered sacred and holy. The olive branch has often been a symbol of abundance, glory, and peace. The leafy branches of the olive tree were ritually offered to deities and powerful figures as emblems of benediction and purification, and they were used to crown the victors of friendly games and bloody wars. Today, olive oil is still used in many religious ceremonies. Over the years, the olive has also been used to symbolize wisdom, fertility, power, and purity.

Ancient Greece

Olives are thought to have been domesticated in the third millennium BC at the latest, at which point they, along with grain and grapes, became part of Colin Renfrew's triad of Greek staple crops that fueled the emergence of more complex societies. Olives, and especially (perfumed) olive oil, became a major export product during the Minoan and Mycenaean periods. Dutch archaeologist Jorrit Kelder proposed that the Mycenaeans sent shipments of olive oil, probably alongside live olive branches, to the court of the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten as a diplomatic gift. In Egypt, these imported olive branches may have acquired ritual meanings, as they are depicted as offerings on the wall of the Aten temple and were used in wreaths for the burial of Tutankhamun. It is likely that, as well as being used for culinary purposes, olive oil was also used to various other ends, including as a perfume.

The ancient Greeks smeared olive oil on their bodies and hair as a matter of grooming and good health. Olive oil was used to anoint kings and athletes in ancient Greece. It was burnt in the sacred lamps of temples and was the "eternal flame" of the original Olympic games. Victors in these games were crowned with its leaves. In Homer's ''Odyssey'', Odysseus crawls beneath two shoots of olive that grow from a single stock, and in the ''Iliad'', (XVII.53ff) there is a metaphoric description of a lone olive tree in the mountains, by a spring; the Greeks observed that the olive rarely thrives at a distance from the sea, which in Greece invariably means up mountain slopes. Greek myth attributed to the primordial culture-hero Aristaeus the understanding of olive husbandry, along with cheese-making and bee-keeping. Olive was one of the woods used to fashion the most primitive Greek cult figures, called '' xoana'', referring to their wooden material; they were reverently preserved for centuries.

It was purely a matter of local pride that the Athenians claimed that the olive grew first in Athens. In an archaic Athenian foundation myth, Athena won the patronage of Attica from Poseidon with the gift of the olive. According to the fourth-century BC father of botany, Theophrastus, olive trees ordinarily attained an age around 200 years, he mentions that the very olive tree of Athena still grew on the Acropolis; it was still to be seen there in the second century AD; and when Pausanias was shown it c. 170 AD, he reported "Legend also says that when the Persians fired Athens the olive was burnt down, but on the very day it was burnt it grew again to the height of two cubits." Indeed, olive suckers sprout readily from the stump, and the great age of some existing olive trees shows that it was possible that the olive tree of the Acropolis dated to the Bronze Age. The olive was sacred to Athena and appeared on the Athenian coinage.

Theophrastus, in ''On the Causes of Plants'', does not give as systematic and detailed an account of olive husbandry as he does of the vine, but he makes clear (in 1.16.10) that the cultivated olive must be vegetatively propagated; indeed, the pits give rise to thorny, wild-type olives, spread far and wide by birds. Theophrastus reports how the bearing olive can be grafted on the wild olive, for which the Greeks had a separate name, ''kotinos''. In his ''Enquiry into Plants'' (2.1.2–4) he states that the olive can be propagated from a piece of the trunk, the root, a twig, or a stake.

Ancient Rome

According to Pliny the Elder, a vine, a fig tree, and an olive tree grew in the middle of the Roman Forum; the olive was planted to provide shade (the garden plot was recreated in the 20th century). The Roman poet Horace mentions it in reference to his own diet, which he describes as very simple: "As for me, olives, endives, and smooth mallows provide sustenance." Lord Monboddo comments on the olive in 1779 as one of the foods preferred by the ancients and as one of the most perfect foods.

Vitruvius describes of the use of charred olive wood in tying together walls and foundations in his ''De Architectura'':

The thickness of the wall should, in my opinion, be such that armed men meeting on top of it may pass one another without interference. In the thickness there should be set a very close succession of ties made of charred olive wood, binding the two faces of the wall together like pins, to give it lasting endurance. For that is a material which neither decay, nor the weather, nor time can harm, but even though buried in the earth or set in the water it keeps sound and useful forever. And so not only city walls but substructures in general and all walls that require a thickness like that of a city wall, will be long in falling to decay if tied in this manner.

Judaism and Christianity

Olives were one of the main elements in ancient Israelite cuisine. Olive oil was used for not only food and cooking, but also lighting, sacrificial offerings, ointment, and anointment for priestly or royal office.Macdonald, Nathan (2008). '' What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat?''. William B. Eerdmans. pp. 23–24. . The olive tree is one of the first plants mentioned in the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament), and one of the most significant. An olive branch (or leaf, depending on translation) was brought back to Noah by a dove to demonstrate that the flood was over (Book of Genesis 8:11).

The olive is listed in Deuteronomy 8:8 as one of the seven species that are noteworthy products of the Land of Israel. According to the Halakha, the Jewish law mandatory for all Jews, the olive is one of the seven species that require the recitation of ''me'eyn shalosh'' after they are consumed. Olive oil is also the most recommended and best possible oil for the lighting of the Shabbat candles.

The Mount of Olives, east of Jerusalem, is mentioned several times in the New Testament. The Allegory of the Olive Tree in St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans refers to the scattering and gathering of Israel. It compares the Israelites to a tame olive tree and the Gentiles to a wild olive branch. The olive tree itself, as well as olive oil and olives, play an important role in the Bible.

Islam

The olive tree and olive oil are mentioned seven times in the Quran, and the olive is praised as a precious fruit. Olive tree and olive oil health benefits have been propounded in prophetic medicine. Muhammad is reported to have said: "Take oil of olive and massage with it – it is a blessed tree" ( Sunan al-Darimi, 69:103). Olives are substitutes for dates (if not available) during Ramadan fasting, and olive tree leaves are used as incense in some Muslim Mediterranean countries.

United States

The Great Seal of the United States first used in 1782 depicts an eagle clutching an olive branch in one of its talons, indicating the power of peace.

United Nations

The Flag of the United Nations adopted in 1946 is a world map with two olive branches.

Oldest known trees

* An olive tree in Mouriscas

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