# Olive

The Olive (Olea Europœa) is a small tree in the family Oleaceae, native to the coastal areas of the eastern Mediterranean Basin (the adjoining coastal areas of southeastern Europe, western Asia and northern Africa) as well as northern Iran at the south end of the Caspian Sea. Its fruit, also called the olive, is of major agricultural importance in the Mediterranean region as the source of olive oil. The tree and its fruit give its name to the plant family, and several languages derive their word for 'oil' from the name of this tree and its fruit.

## Quotes

* A crown of olives on his helm he had, As if in peace and war he were adrad.
** Robert Greene, A Maiden’s Dream (1591), st. 4
* ... Olives luxuriate in limestone regions; from one to ten bushels are yielded by each tree in good seasons, while the only mathematics the Spanish seem to know are the straight lines in which they plant them. An acre of such trees will produce over three hundred pounds of olive oil, consumed in amounts of nearly five gallons per head annually.
** James Albert Harrison, Spain in Profile: A Summer Among the Olives and Aloes. Boston: Houghton, Osgood & Company. 1879. p. 311.
* See there the olive grove of Academe, Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long.
** John Milton, Paradise Regained (1671), Book IV, line 244.
* On our way to Lunel we saw the olive-gathering just beginning; but alas! it had none of gaiety and bright associations of the vintage. On the contrary, it was as business-like and unexciting as weeding onions, or digging potatoes. A set of ragged peasants—the country people hereabouts are poorly dressed—were clambering barefoot in the trees, each man with a basket tied before him, and lazily plucking the dull oily fruit. Occasionally, the olive-gatherers had spread a white cloth beneath the tree, and were shaking the very ripe fruit down; but there was neither jollity nor romance about the process. The olive is a tree of association, but that is all. Its culture, its manuring, and clipping, and trimming, and the grafting—the gathering of its fruits, and their squeezing in the mill, when the ponderous stone goes round and round in the glutinous trough, crushing the very essence out of the oily pulps—while the fat, oleaginous stream pours lazily into the greasy vessels set to receive it;—all this is as prosaic and uninteresting as if the whole Royal Agricultural Society were presiding in spirit over the operations.
** Angus B. Reach, Claret and Olives: From the Garonne to the Rhone; Or, Notes, Social, Picturesque, and Legendary, by the Way. Issue 7 of Putnam's semi-monthly library for travellers and the fireside. New York: George P. Putnam. 1852. pp. 196–197.
* Chemically, table olives are dissimilar to most other fruits consumed as part of the Roman diet. They have a very low sugar content compared to many other drupes such as apricots or cherries. Table olives are a variable food, ranging considerably in colour, flavour, texture, and taste. Outside of the olive-growing areas, the consumption of oil depended upon wealth, personal taste, proximity to military sites, proximity to large urban centres and accessibility to trade routes. Ancient historians and scientists alike are interested in understanding the relationship between volumes of consumption and human health. The modern-day Mediterranean diet is often lauded for its health benefits. It has been found to generate long life expectancies and people who adhere to the diet have very low incidences of heart disease, cancer and rheumatoid arthritis.
** Erica Rowan, "Chapter. Olives and Olive Oil". The Routledge Handbook of Diet and Nutrition in the Roman World. 2018. pp. 129–139. ISBN 9781351107334. (edited by Paul Erdkamp and Claire Holleran)
* My club, a beetling olive's stalwart trunk And shapely, still environed in its bark: This hand had torn from holiest Helicon The tree entire, with all its fibrous roots.
** Theocritus, Idyll XXV, "Heracles the Lion Slayer", as translated by C. S. Calverley (1869)
* O that I were lying under the olives, Lying alone among the anemones! Shell-colour’d blossoms they bloom there and scarlet, Far under stretches of silver woodland, Flame in the delicate shade of the olives.
** Margaret Louisa Woods, "March Thoughts from England", st. 1

## The Bible: Authorized King James Version

* And the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off; so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth.
** Genesis, Chapter 8, Verse 11
* 1 Blessed is every one that feareth the Lord; that walketh in his ways. 2 For thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands: happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee. 3 Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house; thy children like olive plants round thy table. 4 Behold, that thus shall the man be blessed that feareth the Lord.
** Psalm 128, Verses 1–4

## External links

* (April 13, 2020)"OLIVE OIL | How is it Made? in Spain! (OLIVE: How Does it Grow?)". TRUE FOOD TV, YouTube.