Olive branch

“ Well, I also, in my life’s experience, have planted olives and watched them grow; and if I were to return to the spot, doubtless by this time I might reap some of the fruit of my labour. Who knows? perhaps the contents of this jar were gathered from those very identical trees! The thought is a pleasant one to myself, and will impart an extra relish to the flavour. That was in a large oil district in Syria, where the whole of the high land was devoted to the cultivation of the olive tree, both for the sake of the fruit and the oil it yields ”

“ In Spain it may be said to be the favorite olive, but in some of the northern provinces where the tree is out of its element it gives no fruit at all but only attains a colossal size and hence is classed by the country people as a wild tree. But as we shall proceed to show it has none of the attributes of the wild tree, so far from it that it is one of the "oil press olives," one of the varieties most highly domesticated and cultivated that the world knows. ”

“ One wonders how these slender fragments of trunk can support that spreading weight above, especially in wind and tempest, and how that wealth of blossom and fruit can draw sufficient sustenance through such narrow and splintered channels; but the olive is tough, and the oil that runs in its veins for blood keeps it ever vigorous. ”

“ Men climbed the trunks, everywhere shaking the laden branches and hitting them with long bamboo poles to knock the fruit off, while women and children, squatting on their haunches, spent laborious hours filling baskets underneath, then loading mules and donkeys with their daily “catch.” But an olive to eat was unobtainable. ”

“ The olive was first planted in England in the seventeenth century, but its fruit does not ripen in the open air in northern climates. From early ages the olive-tree has been highly esteemed both for its fruit, and for the valuable oil extracted from it. ”

“ The olive is without question the most important tree on this coast; it prevails, and gives its colour to the country everywhere, except in the Montagnes des Maures and the Estérel. This is a most difficult tree for an artist to deal with, as it forms no masses of foliage; the small pointed leaves, dull green above, pale below, are so disposed that the foliage can be represented only by a series of pencil scratches. The trunk has a tendency to split into three or four parts in the ground. The vitality of the olive is remarkable. ”

“ Like all fruit-trees in France, the olive is most carefully trimmed, and clipped, and tortured, and twisted into the most approved or fashionable shape. The man who can make his oliviers look most like umbrellas is the great cultivator; and the services of the peasants who have got a reputation for olive dressing are better paid than those of any agricultural labourers in France. ”

“ Though every two years is generally considered often enough to thoroughly prune an olive, there is abundant work for the knife each year after the crop is gathered, in taking off the dead, weak, and sickly branches, to the end that the sap may go to fruit, and not be obliged to keep useless wood in life. The tree so treated will be better able to resist frost, will bloom and yield more heavily, and its olives will contain more oil than do those of one that does not receive this care.
The olive is exceedingly subject to a species of dry rot, and unskillful pruning may actually cause it. ”

“ Belgodere might be a sanctuary of Pallas, it lies embosomed in such luxuriant groves of her favourite tree.
It is said that there is no district throughout the whole of Italy where the olive attains such a size as it does in the Balagna. The thickness of its stem, its abundance of branches, and the quantity of fruit it produces, are equally astonishing. It is mighty as a beech, and in the heat of noon you rest cool under its shelter. The olive is a tree that one cannot but love. ”

“ And this is the reason why the olive should wave its branches over the other trees. For, like manna, it is a composite growth—a food, a fruit, a medicine. Always fruitful for a three-fold end; and never failing to be prolific, the trees bearing even for centuries.
And this is why the prophet Jotham reports the trees as first urging the olive to become king; and why he felt disappointed when the olive tree, in the beginning, refused, saying:
"Should I leave my fatness, wherewith by me they honor God and man, and go to be promoted over the trees?" ”

“ The consociation of the olive with other fruits will prove beneficial from every point of view. The olive crop is an inconstant one, the natural tendency of the tree is to only bear heavily every other year, it has many enemies, and until the fruit has formed, nothing is assured. ”

“ In passing over a long period, during which the praises of the olive tree have been sung in many tongues, we come to that great agriculturist, Parmentier, who during the last century was instrumental in the introduction of the potato into France. He says: "Of all the trees that the industry of men has made profitable, the olive tree deserves, without contradiction, the very first place." ”

“ On the slopes of the northern Apennines, olives are the usual forest timber; the whole of the Val d’Arno is wooded with them, every one of its gardens is filled with them, and they grow in orchard-like ranks out of its fields of maize, or corn, or vine; so that it is physically impossible, in most parts of the neighborhood of Florence, Pistoja, Lucca, or Pisa, to choose any site of landscape which shall not owe its leading character to the foliage of these trees. What the elm and oak are to England, the olive is to Italy ”

“ The olive-tree attains to a great age: some specimens on the Mount of Olives are estimated to have been 2,000 years in existence. Olives, commonly pickled in brine, are chiefly used in England for dessert or between courses, to remove the flavour of the viands previously eaten. ”

“ The wild olive is a small tree or bush of rather straggling growth, with thorny branches and opposite oblong pointed leaves, dark greyish-green above and, in the young state, hoary beneath with whitish scales; the small white flowers, with four-cleft calyx and corolla, two stamens and bifid stigma, are borne on the last year’s wood, in racemes springing from the axils of the leaves; the drupaceous fruit is small in the wild plant, and the fleshy pericarp, which gives the cultivated olive its economic value, is hard and comparatively thin. ”

“ This olive is of middle stature and is fond of sheltered spots with rich and deep soils. Fogs do not harm it. It is very prolific, produces many blossoms and gives fruit in abundance. The berries form in bunches of five, six, seven and even nine in a cluster, and bend the branches to the ground with their weight.
The berries are long and bulged at the lower end, fleshy, but do not give as much oil in proportion as some of the foregoing. This olive has the peculiarity of fruiting on the wood of the year and is therefore an annual. ”

“ Every olive tree here is worth from fifteen to twenty piastres. The soil in which the trees grow is regularly ploughed, but nothing is sown between the trees, as it is found that any other vegetation diminishes the quantity of olives. The ground round the stem is covered to the height of two or three feet with earth, to prevent the sun from hurting the roots, and to give it the full benefit of the rains. We met with a few tents of Arabs Zereykat and El Hayb, who were pasturing their sheep upon the wild herbs by the road side. ”

“ It is doubtful whether the olive produces more oil when picked barely ripe, or at full maturity, or when it commences to fall from the tree. The usual belief is in favor of a deferred harvest, and the country people express it in the couplet that heads this chapter. ”

“ The vitality of the olive is remarkable. After a century, it may be after more, the core of the trunk decays, and the tree parts into sections, and lives on through the ever-vital bark. The bark curls about the decayed sections, and forms a fresh tree. Consequently, in place of one huge ancient olive, one finds three or four younger trees, but all with a look on them as if they were the children of old age, growing out of the same root. ”

“ In the olive there is great variety of kinds, and the methods of cultivation differ greatly in different districts; in Bari, Chieti and Lecce, for instance, there are regular woods of nothing but olive-trees, while in middle Italy there are olive-orchards with the interspaces occupied by crops of various kinds. ”

“ XXIV. Scrofa resumed: "The varieties of olives to plant in rich and warm land are the preserving olive radius major, the olive of Sallentina, the round orchis, the bitter posea, the Sergian, the Colminian, and the waxy albicera: which ever of these does best in your locality, plant that most extensively. ”

“ With respect to olive grounds, some have trees of their own: others hire, at a given sum, so many trees, and take their chance in the harvest. That oil is best which is made by the process of boiling the olives, when the oil separates and floats on the surface, and is skimmed off by the hands. ”

“ The residents of the olive districts both in Greece, Spain, and in California often prefer the olive preserved after it has ripened, the oil having then matured and the flavor being finer. Among the export trade there is much prejudice against it owing to its dull, black color. Olives should be of good color, crisp and firm, but never tough. ”

“ The primary, or mother branches of an olive, are its arms, and are not to be lopped off without a good and sufficient reason. Although the tree may grow and flourish for many years, its new branches never will have the strength and exuberence of their predecessors. ”

“ The manner of harvesting, of oil making by treading the berries, of planting on fertile plains where sycamores grow, of seeking the wild olives on the mountains where the birds had scattered the seeds, of the danger of the olive from fire, all this is repeated to-day in the European home of the olive. The oil olive, being essentially a product of civilization, no longer flourishes in Palestine; without man's fostering care it soon reverts to its wild state and ceases to fruit, and finally disappears altogether. ”

“ If the berry is left upon the tree the skin finally wrinkles and the color becomes a dull black. This is the state in which it is popularly supposed to give the most oil, which we have already shown to be a fallacy but even granting it to be true, the quality is inferior, the flavor gross and the oil soon becomes rancid. An olive is fully ripe when on being squeezed between the thumb and finger the soft pulp shows no white, but for many reasons, as we have seen, it may be desirable to forestall this period.
No time can be set when an olive crop should be harvested. ”

“ The small olive of Syria is considered the most delicate, and Italian olives also are very fine; those of Spain are larger and coarser. The best olive-oil comes from the south-eastern portion of France and is a clear, pure liquid; it is obtained from the first pressing of the fruit. This must be only a gentle squeeze, to get the purest oil: the quality usually sold is made by a heavier pressure; and then, when the olives are worked over again, come the dregs, which are not fit for table-use."
"Do they mash 'em, like making apples into cider?" asked Malcolm. ”

“ The olive if kept low will have more vigor than if allowed to grow high, but do not oppose the nature of the tree too much. If it is of a variety that attains a great stature, to a certain extent it must be allowed to have its own way. ”

“ The olive tree prefers hills and elevated places, does not grow well in valley lands, low and wet, or where water stands. Its fruit corresponds to the soil where it is planted; in rich and moist land it gives a heavy and fatty oil; in the warm and dry soils the oil will be finer ”

“ The Mediterranean is the home of the Myrtle and Olive, of Oranges and Lemons, of Figs and Vines, of Almonds and 116 Raisins, as well as of many other important and interesting plants.
The olive crop in Italy yields about ninety millions of gallons of olive-oil every year. The olives are collected as soon as they become ripe, and are crushed in circular stone troughs with a perpendicular millstone. ”

“ Those whose chief experience of the olive is the large, coarse, and not agreeable Spanish variety, used only as an appetizer, know little of the value of the best varieties as food, nutritious as meat, and always delicious. Good bread and a dish of pickled olives make an excellent meal. The sort known as the Mission olive, planted by the Franciscans a century ago, is generally grown now, and the best fruit is from the older trees. The most successful attempts in cultivating the olive and putting it on the market have been made by Mr. ”

“ Experience, some say, has shown that the olive cultivated alone, in rich soil grows vigorously; makes each year a number of new shoots, but gives little fruit, as the sap being too active to fix the blossom, is carried to the extremities, and the flower falls. To obtain good trees quickly, one should never sow underneath them at first, but however afterwards, to get good fruit it is advantageous to do so; but only then the year of the crop. Thus one should prune, manure, and cultivate to force shoots or young wood to bear fruit. ”

“ This will give a far better result than crowding an acre with over a hundred olives trees. The olive under favorable conditions is a prolific bearer but too much crowding stunts the trees and exhausts the soil. The result is seen in weak and puny trees that bear no fruit. ”