Plant · P-425

Olive

Olea europaea

Olive fruit is not eaten raw off the tree - it has to be cured in brine, water, oil, salt or lye before it is palatable, while the seed yields the pressed cooking oil. It is a slow, long-lived tree, taking about six years to bear its first fruit but yielding for fifty years or more, and it needs full sun and drought-tolerant, free-draining ground; standing wet ground does it more harm than heat ever does. A freeze that kills the canopy to the ground does not kill the tree - it regrows from the underground crown, though that costs a season's crop.