Olives

These evergreen trees can attain a great age–some in the eastern Mediterranan are estimated to be over 2,000 years old. They grow to a height of 20-40 feet and begin to bear fruit sometime between 4 and 8 years old. They bear lanceolate leaves and bloom with little whitish flowers that are wonderfully fragrant. Tennyson talks about Catullus’ “olive-silvery Sirmio” in Frater Ave atque Vale.

Scientific Names : Olea Oleaster ; Olea lancifolia ; Olea gallica ; Olea europaea

Olea europaea is a small, ever green tree, averaging 20 feet or more inheight. It has many thin branches with opposite branchlets and shortly-stalked, opposite, lanceolate leaves about 2 1/4 inches long, acute, entire and smooth, pale green above and silvery below. The bark is pale grey and the flowers numerous, small and creamy white in colour.

The dark purple fruit is a drupe about 3/4 inch long, ovoid and often pointed, the fleshy part filled with oil. The thick, bony stone has a blunt keel down one side. It contains a single seed.

Being hardier than the lemon, the Olive may sometimes produce fruit in England. The largest of the varieties under cultivation is produced in Spain, but probably Italy prepares most oil, the annual average being 33 million gallons.

The beautifully-veined wood not only takes a fine polish, but is faintly fragrant, and is much valued for small cabinet-work. It was in olden days carved into statues of gods.

For use as a dessert fruit the unripe olives are steeped in water to reduce their bitterness. Olives à la Picholine are steeped in a solution of lime and wood ashes. They are bottled in an aromatic solution of salt.

In warm countries the bark exudes a substance called Gomme d’Olivier, which was formerly used in medicine as a vulnerary.

The large ‘Queen Olives’ grown near Cadiz are chiefly exported to the United States; the smaller ‘Manzanillo’ is principally consumed in Spain and Spanish America.

The trees bear fruit in their second year; in their sixth will repay cultivation, and continue as a source of wealth even when old and hollow, though the crop varies greatly from year to year.

The groves are cut until the beauty of the trees is lost.

The ripe fruits are pressed to extract the oil, the methods varying in the different countries.

Virgin Oil, greenish in tint, is obtained by pressing crushed fruit in coarse bags and skimming the oil from the tubs of water through which it is conducted. The cake left in the bags is broken up, moistened, and repressed. Sometimes the fruit is allowed to reach fermenting point before pressure, the quantity of oil being increased and the quality lessened. The product is called Huile fermentée.

Huile ordinaire is made by expression and mixture with boiling water.

Provence oil is the most valued and the most refined.

Official Olive soap is made from olive oil and sodium hydroxide.

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