[John]

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.

[John]

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.

[JTh]

I would love to have one of those olive trees from Crete.

[John]

Hi Jorun, yes and it's a shame because we saw them just after you left us at the end of the conference.

[JTh]

Of course!

[oron peri]

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

[John]

I agree. Both have a considerable girth due to age!

[John]

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.

[fragman]

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.

[John]

The amazing thing is that the whole hillside has many of them about the same size.

[John]

From memory I think that the oldest (alleged) olive on Crete is a Loutro on the SW coast.

[fragman]

By chance happened to see yesterday one of the oldest Israeli olives, located near Kibbutz Tzuba west of Jerusalem.

[John]

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.

[Hilary]

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

[Alisdair]

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.