The MGS Forum
Plants for mediterranean gardens => Trees and Shrubs => Topic started by: John on September 02, 2011, 10:34:19 PM
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The olive must have a mention. At the same time I was pulling some pictures out of Cyclamen graecum near Fourfouras in central Crete I remembered an amazing grove of olives which are some of the largest I have seen. I mentioned to Oron that they were much bigger than any we saw in Israel. Most of them are so old that their centres have decayed and often disappeared and all of them have been pollarded at some point. How old they are is a different question but they are large.
The first picture is with me for scale at the first one I photographed. Later I thought others were much larger and the second picture is of a particularly large specimen.
Perhaps others would like to post images of large specimens. Not necessarily as a competition to see who can find the biggest but certainly for the interest as they must be of a great age.
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Here's a picture of one of the old trees at the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. It is obviously old but if it is 2000 years old, as suggested, it must have grown very slowly.
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I would love to have one of those olive trees from Crete.
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Hi Jorun, yes and it's a shame because we saw them just after you left us at the end of the conference.
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Of course!
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It is offcours impossible to say the age of these trees.
Consider that the trees in Jerusalem recive much less rain then the Creten trees, for example last winter we had about 350mm in jerusalem.
These trees grow almost in semidesert conditions but i must admit that the Olive trees in Crete are much more impressive. and the guy with blue tshirt too ;)
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I agree. Both have a considerable girth due to age!
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I have just delved back to April two years ago when I was travelling with a friend to the south of Rome on the Pontine marshes. I stopped and took these pictures from the main road of a nursery of containerised mature (some of them very) olives. I have to say it felt very sad. I think the last two pictures particularly make it feel like an olive graveyard where the old trees are put to rest. Having said that it is probably better to do this with them if the other outcome was to have just destroyed them.
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The Cretan tree is nothing but stunning. Considering that the ones in Mt of Olives are said to be 900 years old (planted by crusaders and regularly irrigated), this one may well be much more than 1000.
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The amazing thing is that the whole hillside has many of them about the same size.
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From memory I think that the oldest (alleged) olive on Crete is a Loutro on the SW coast.
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By chance happened to see yesterday one of the oldest Israeli olives, located near Kibbutz Tzuba west of Jerusalem.
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Thanks for your picture. If the growth rate with you is say a third of that of the northern Med then it is quite an old tree. I have some concern with special old trees. The more we make people aware of them the more likely they are to be protected but also the more likely they are to become a tourist attraction the more damage they suffer especially to soil compaction and even vandalism e.g. carving.
Though as my pictures from the nursery (shown previously) being an old tree in Europe is no protection. They may also actually lack protection as they are probably classed as commercial fruit trees. I believe in the UK that this is the case with fruits trees they are normally exempt from "Tree Preservation Orders" and can be removed without needing any authorities permission.
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There was a very old historic Olive tree in Athens somewhere which wasn't protected and got run over by a lorry.
I will try and see if we can find it this winter
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Those ancient trees are amazing - thanks very much, John and Ori!
I do agree about the sadness of seeing venerable olives squashed into pots in nurseries, really horrid. But they are remarkably resilient, and do seem to flourish once shipped to their new homes. A thousand times better of course to see them on their original hillside terraces than in some plush luxury hotel development.
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Oh what a lovely topic. Truly stunning characters, all of them, an extraordinary symbol of resilience and patience!
I agree wholeheartedly with the comments about seeing them in the nursery, it is quite shocking, but I am pleased to report that I have 88 mature olive trees in the garden here, most of them only around 100 years old, so babies by comparison, but they are doing just fine and, as far as we know, would have gone to the bonfire if we had not re-homed them.
The largest is this one, which we estimate to be somewhere around 300 years of age:
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Olive picking - Cyprus style!!
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Good game, good game!
Doing mine in the next few days.
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I thought it was another guessing game; who and where.
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You could always take a flying stab at it, David, no prizes for a correct answer though.
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Not many clues. Face is well hidden however pink Adidas trainers might be a give away.
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I saw something that was new to me when I visited Brian in Spain last week, in many of the olive groves the bottom of the trunks were covered with soil, and I was told that there were two explanations for this practice, 1: to make it easier to gather the olives when they were falling down, 2: to prevent the growth of suckers. Have any of you an opinion about the usefulness of this practice?
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No experience/opinion, Jorun, but a question: was that ground bare because of (a) cultivation (b) herbicides or (c) utter drought?
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I am not sure, but this scraped surface seemed to be the result of some mechanical work, if they used herbicides as well, I can't tell. In addition, it was terribly dry, they had no rain for several months (the rains started when I left).
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It also looked just like this when I was out there with Brian in May! No weeds, nothing else.
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I much prefer to see olive groves full of wild flowers, like this one in the Greek Peloponnese, in late spring....
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I agree, Alisdair
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In our old olive grove the soil has piled against the trees by default from when they used to plough between them. I don't see any reduction in suckering.
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There are many old traditions (?) associated with olives, for example to keep the centre of the tree open enough to allow birds to fly through. But why? No one has an answer. I suspect its the same with hilling-up olives. Very unlikely that herbicides are used. As Fleur says it will not reduce suckering, if anything it will increase it. Maybe someone , sometime said that it will reduce water loss or even frost damage. Probably it is the result of continuous cultivations. The same can occur in most tree crops.
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Here's a similar picture to the one Jorun posted near Brian's of some older trees with larger mounds. There is some weed growth which does look like otherwise there is intensive weed control.
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open-centredness...
well, I can think of three reasons why it might be a useful idea:
- it would encourage development of lateral branches from the top of the trunk, which:
- might be more prone to produce new growth (hence flowering/fruiting growth) than more-vertical branches
- might provide easier/better supports for ladders while picking fruit
- might provide a natural platform on which to stand, from which you would have easier access to the 'rim' of fruiting branches (imagine standing in the middle of a big cup)
Just theorizing.
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I agree with Mike's comments about keeping the center open, it will give more light and enhance the fruiting, and it is easier to harvest. I find it quite simular to what I have been taught here in Norway abot pruning apple trees, the branches should be sufficiently open to allow a hat to be thrown between them. Well, I suppose the need for light is greater in the north, that's why a hat is used as a measure here, while a bird is more fitting in Greece.
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It would also mean better ripening of fruit on any tree and some possible reduction is some cases of disease
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Take a good look at an olive tree in full bearing. The majority of fruits are found on the outside of the tree; they simply do not grow in the middle. Also the South West side of the tree bears more fruits than the rest of the tree at least that is the situation in the Gard. Olives are produced on one year old wood.
Certainly pruning reflects picking practice. It is far easier to pick from the ground than to climb a ladder, I know from experience.
Old olives were grown "the old way" ie in a square just like old Bramley apples and cherries. Propagation was very difficult, until the arrival of mist, and there were few rooted cuttings to go round. The square allowed horse or tractor cultivation. The trees were allowed to "fill" the space. To-day olives are grown in a hedgerow, with very dense plantings and the use of mechanical pruning. They "fill" the space within a few years. Herbicides I presume are used in these intensively grown plantations for example in Northern Spain and I assume in Australia and California.
While ancient olive trees maybe fantastic specimens they can tell a hard story.
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We have just harvested 780 kgs of our olives of the manzanilla variety with the help of some friends during 3 days. I had expected the yield to be lower after 240 litres of rain in October & November here in Malaga Province,Andalucia but I came back from the mill yesterday with 155 litres ,a yield of 19.6%. In other parts of Andalucia, like Jaen where there are a lot of olives, the harvest doesn't start until end December or early January, but around here it is warmer and the olives are ready earlier. In the photo one can see how green this year's oil is, compared to last year's, and a lovely fruity taste. It has 0.4% acidity.
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There is an excellent small collection of articles on olives on the MGS web site - http://www.mediterraneangardensociety.org/olives.html (http://www.mediterraneangardensociety.org/olives.html#1)
Contributors: Brian Chatterton, Chevrel Traher, Dr. Peter A. Roussos, Davina Michaelides. Many thanks to them.
We have discussed pruning/shaping olives in this thread; peruse that link and more will be revealed.
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You can find advice about this in the Fruit and Veg section: for a shortcut to get you there just click now on curing olives (http://www.mgsforum.org/smf/index.php?topic=1158.0)