Portraits of 26 ancients

Akkarit Olive Tree

Akkarit, Douiret, Tataouine Governorate, Tunisia · ~900 years attributed by portal accounts; held the Africa-oldest record until the Echraf recognition

The tree stands at Akkarit, on the edge of the Amazigh town of Douiret in the Tataouine governorate of southern Tunisia. No measured dimensions of it were found in any source opened. The record on it is brief and consists of portal accounts of its age and of one recognition that concerns it only indirectly.

The age figure is 900 years, and it is an attribution. It is carried by a story syndicated from Tunisian state news through the Saudi Press Agency, in the versions published by the Gulf Herald and Riyadh Daily. Neither account names a person or laboratory behind the figure, and no dating study of the tree has been located.

The 900-year figure matters because it stood as the claim for Africa's oldest olive until the Tunisian Olive Institute recognised the Echraf tree at El Haouaria in northern Tunisia as the continent's oldest. In the news accounts, the Echraf recognition superseded the Akkarit tree's claim.

The tree still produces oil, on the record of the same accounts. The seed row for this portrait carried a claim that it yields more than 1,500 litres of oil in fruitful years. No opened source supports that figure, and it is not used in this prose.

No protection instrument was found for the tree — no ministerial decision, no gazette entry, no register number. It survives on the record as a regional landmark whose age and production rest on unattributed figures.

From the public record: thegulfherald.com · alriyadhdaily.com

Al-Badawi Olive Tree

Al-Walaja, Bethlehem, West Bank, Palestine · competing attributed ages of 3,000-5,500 years; guarded full-time by Salah Abu Ali

The tree stands at Al-Walaja, a village on the edge of Bethlehem in the West Bank, close against Israel's separation wall, which the accounts place between ten and twenty metres from the tree. Published dimensions put it about 12 to 13 metres high and some 25 metres across, its canopy covering roughly 250 square metres, with roots that the Middle East Eye report carries to a depth of about 25 metres. Roya News describes the tree as about 22 trunks connected as one part, a form the guard calls an 'olive vineyard'. No measurement of the trunk itself is published.

Every age figure is attributed, and none agrees. The Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture is quoted at about 5,000 years in the 2019 Middle East Eye report. Ruba Saleh's account in the Jerusalem Quarterly, 'In the Seam Zone', puts the age at around 4,000 to 5,000 years, on the estimate of Japanese and European experts. Roya News in 2018 carried estimates of about 3,000 years from Italian experts and about 5,500 from Japanese experts. Atlas Obscura reports that in 2010 two teams, one Italian and one Japanese, carbon-dated the tree and arrived at a range of 3,000 to 5,500 years. No laboratory report or publication of any of these figures has been located.

The guard is on the record. Salah Abu Ali, who calls himself the tree's servant, has guarded it since the Palestinian Authority took him on at a salary the reports put at roughly $410 a month. He pumps water from the spring above the site, tends the soil, and sleeps beneath the tree as his father did before him; his sons help and sleep there too. He tells Middle East Eye the tree 'captivates the mind' and that it is the most beautiful tree in Palestine, and the family, which owns the land, refuses to sell. Roya News reports that the appointment followed a request from village families after Israeli civil and military officials took samples and measurements from the tree. Atlas Obscura's account calls the guarding a 24/7 job.

The yield figures conflict and are carried by different reporters. Atlas Obscura, in a good recent year with rain, has Abu Ali harvesting 400 kilograms of olives, where twenty years ago he says the tree regularly made 600; one year the tree was barren. The Middle East Eye report has the tree once producing half a tonne of olives a year, and last year's olives yielding only 250 kilograms of oil, with years of no production at all. The seed row for this portrait carried a figure of about 10 litres of oil per harvest; no opened source supports it, and it is not used here.

The tree carries several names. Abu Ali calls it 'the fortress'; the older village names are 'the old woman', 'the mother of olives' and 'Palestine's bride'. It is named al-Badawi for Sheikh Ahmad al-Badawi, an Egyptian Sufi holy man said to have spent long periods beneath its branches, and Atlas Obscura records that the tree was once a pilgrimage site for Sufis. Saleh's account calls the tree the village's 'proud guardian' and notes that the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities recommends it as a destination. Roya News reports that President Mahmoud Abbas gave a bottle of the tree's oil to Barack Obama when he took office in 2009.

The protection is practical rather than statutory. No decision, law or register entry protecting the tree was found; its standing rests on the permanent guard, the family's refusal to sell, and the tree's meaning as a symbol of the village's land struggle. Saleh's account has the tree's roots standing directly in the Wall's path. The age claims, the producer's and the ministry's included, are on record as competing estimates with no settled method behind any of them.

From the public record: atlasobscura.com · middleeasteye.net · en.royanews.tv · palestine-studies.org

Ancient Olive of Aigina (Valley of Eleonas)

Valley of Eleonas, Aigina, Saronic Gulf, Greece · 2,700-year age attributed to DNA analysis by Aristoleo (Dr Magiatis's lab, Athens), tree found 2012; grove estimates run 400 to 2,000 years

The valley is known as Eleonas, the olive grove, and lies about eight kilometres from the port of Aigina in the Saronic Gulf, south of the village of Pachia Rachi and below the foothills of Mount Oros, the island's highest point and the remains of an extinct volcano. Travel accounts place it on the slopes once held sacred to Ellanios Zeus. Paths descend to it from Pachia Rachi, Kapotides and Marathon. Three small chapels, Agios Georgios, Agia Kyriaki and Agia Triada, stand among the trees. The land is described as owned mainly by a monastery, and the grove was chosen by the French fashion house Hermès for the shooting of its 2005 collection.

One tree within the grove carries a specific age claim. Athan Gadanidis, founder of the olive-oil company Aristoleo, records that he found the tree in 2012 and named it his 'Mama tree', and that leaves were taken from its top, middle and lower branches to the Athens laboratory of Dr Magiatis. On the strength of that DNA analysis Aristoleo states that the tree is approximately 2,700 years old and of the variety it calls Aegean Throuba, most common on the island of Thassos. The same page states that the Aigina tree is of the same variety as a tree on Naxos that Aristoleo puts at about 5,000 years and the 'Pisistratous olive tree' in Athens that it puts at about 2,500 years, and that none of the three was grafted. Gadanidis reads that as evidence that ancient growers raised the trees in nurseries from cuttings and planted them across the Aegean and Attica.

The figure of 2,700 years applies to one tree and is not the number most accounts of the grove carry. We Love Aegina gives the trunks an estimated age of 400 years and adds that on the basis of calculations some are 1,500 years old. One Day Cruise likewise puts the olives at over 400 years. Greeka writes that in some trees the outer bark alone is 400 to 500 years old and that the oldest have been estimated at no less than 1,500 to 2,000 years. Olympic Holidays reports trees believed over 1,000 and possibly 2,000 years old. None of these pages names a dating body or a method, and no record of a study by Greece's Demokritos research centre was found in any opened page.

The recorded sizes vary with the source. Greeka gives one of the largest trees 13 metres round its trunk with an internal cavity 2.5 metres in diameter. We Love Aegina records a tree whose trunk, at the base, covers a surface of 30 square metres. One Day Cruise describes trunks reaching 10 metres in perimeter, and Olympic Holidays reports circumferences exceeding 40 feet, roughly 12 metres, with trunks hollowed by age.

The grove sits on the island of the temple of Aphaea, but no source opened here connects the olive trees to the sanctuary or to the olive-oil prizes of the Panathenaic games. The documented prize oil of the Panathenaea came from the sacred olive trees of Athena, the moriai, transplanted to the Academy in Athens; the Byzantine lexicon known as the Suda records the moriai as the source of that oil. That is an Athenian grove, not an Aeginetan one.

No protection instrument was found for the grove or for the tree. Olympic Holidays reports a growing movement on Aigina seeking official recognition of the Eleonas as a heritage site, but no designation, register entry or decision surfaced in any source opened here.

The tree still yields olives, according to Aristoleo, rich in phenolic compounds. No record was found of oil pressed from the tree under a name of its own, and no published laboratory paper was located for the DNA work that carries the 2,700-year figure.

From the public record: aristoleo.com · greeka.com · onedaycruise.gr · olympicholidays.com · weloveaegina.com · cs.uky.edu

Ancient Olive Trees of Cyprus (the Department of Forests' natural monuments)

Cyprus · protected as natural monuments by the Department of Forests; 115 individual trees and 27 tree groups declared protected by end-2017 (Forestry Director T. Papachristophorou)

The protection of old trees in Cyprus rests with the Department of Forests. Its director, Takis Papachristophorou, told Phileleftheros that a tree may be declared protected if it has a large trunk, a crown rare or unique of its kind, a historical or religious tradition, or dominates a region, and that by the end of 2017, 115 individual trees and 27 tree groups had been declared protected. An account of the island's oldest trees carried by in-cyprus gives the number as 98 old trees without a date; the two figures have not been reconciled in any source opened here.

The tree most often called the oldest olive in Cyprus stands at Potima, near Xyliatos in the Nicosia district. in-cyprus gives it a periphery of 13 metres and a height of 6 metres, and the Centre of Visual Arts and Research in Nicosia records the same 13-metre periphery. The same in-cyprus account states that after many efforts by the Xyliatos Community Council the tree was placed under the protection of the Department of Forests, which issued a decree describing such trees as 'scientifically, historically, culturally and educationally important' and as significant specimens 'because of their age or their exceptional size'. The Department of Forests' Tree of the Year 2012 flyer is reported to give the same tree a girth of 12.80 metres; the flyer's PDF could not be opened here, returning HTTP 400.

The village of Anglisides, just outside Larnaca, holds the tree that in-cyprus calls the oldest Cypriot olive standing outside a town centre, more than 800 years old, still bearing fruit and maintained by the Department of Forests, beside an Olive Museum. An ArcGIS storymap on the olive tree in Cyprus gives the same Anglisides tree 700 years. The Department's Tree of the Year 2012 flyer is reported to give it a girth of 10.35 metres; that PDF also could not be opened here.

Cypriot tradition distinguishes the frankoelies, 'Frankish olives', thought to date from the period of Frankish rule (1191-1489), from the apostolitzi, said to have sprung from olive stones thrown down by the Apostles Paul and Barnabas, a distinction recorded in the University of Cyprus academic Euphrosyne Rizopoulou-Egoumenidou's essay on the olive in Cyprus. The Department of Forests' 2012 flyer is reported to record groups of old trees at Anogyra (43 trees), Germasogia (18) and Pano Lefkara (18), and to state that following an order of the Minister of Interior many groups and isolated olive trees were declared protected, with the Department responsible for tending them. None of that flyer's text could be opened directly.

Elsewhere the figures are carried by local reporting. An article on Good News in Cyprus gives the olive tree at the Golden Donkeys Farm, Skarinou, an estimated age of 1,500 years without naming the estimator, and describes a protected 800-year-old olive tree on the property of the Terra Oliva farm (Ktima Sofokleous) near Lefkara.

None of these ages is a dated measurement. Olive trunks in Cyprus, as in Greece, are usually hollow, ring counts are unreliable, and the published estimates rest on trunk size. Rizopoulou-Egoumenidou records the very old olive trees with hollow trunks and the two traditional names. Every figure above is an attribution; the sources carry no method.

The seed list for this portrait named further trees: an olive at Akrotiri attributed more than 1,500 years, an 'Olive of Vouches' at Skoulli, and protected specimens at Athiainou, Flasou, Psematismenos, Akamas, Kato Lefkara, Anogyra, Potamiou and Skarinou. Of these, Anogyra (as a frankoelies group of 43) and Skarinou are documented above. No source opened here records a 1,500-year-old olive at Akrotiri, an olive named 'Vouches' at Skoulli, or protected olives at Athiainou, Psematismenos, Kato Lefkara or Potamiou. The 1,500-year figures that did surface for Cyprus belong to a terebinth tree at Apesia, which both accounts list among the oldest trees in Cyprus, and to the olive at Skarinou.

The Department of Forests' work is ongoing. The same Phileleftheros interview records that old trees are treated as living monuments of nature, tied to the island's history and tradition. No decision numbers or gazette references for individual Cypriot olives surfaced in any opened source; the protection rests on ministerial orders and departmental decrees whose numbers are not published in the accounts found.

From the public record: en.philenews.com · web.archive.org · goodnewsincyprus.com · storymaps.arcgis.com · ia800602.us.archive.org

Anıt Zeytin of Bakır, Kırkağaç (Kocazeytin)

Bakır, Kırkağaç, Manisa, Turkey · registered anıt ağaç in 2010 by the Tabiat Varlıklarını Koruma Kurulu; age recorded as 1,657 years

The tree grows in the Bakır neighbourhood of Kırkağaç district in Manisa, the Turkish province with the most olive trees. The Aegean Geographical Journal survey of 2025 counts about 30.6 million olive trees in the province, ahead of Aydın at 25.2 million, İzmir at 21.7 million and Muğla at 19.7 million, drawing on the Turkish statistical institute's 2023 figures. The Manisa environmental plan records 274 registered anıt ağaç across the province. The tree is known in the botanical literature as Kocazeytin, the great olive; it was studied under that name by Satıl, Tümen and Soykan in 2002.

The registration is recorded in the Manisa Çevre Düzeni Planı, the provincial environmental plan, which states that the tree was registered as an anıt ağaç in 2010 by the Tabiat Varlıklarını Koruma Kurulu, the board for the protection of natural assets. The plan gives no decision number. The survey that lists the tree opens with the Turkish classification of monument trees into historic, mystical, folkloric and dimensional groups, the scheme under which a registered anıt ağaç is protected. The survey's own field project covered Akhisar and Kırkağaç together, its title naming both districts. The ministry's anıt ağaçlar register, anitagaclar.gov.tr, which the 2025 compilation cites as the official list, returned no reachable page during this research, so the primary registration decision was not opened.

The plan puts the age at 1,657 years. The 2025 survey lists the tree among Turkey's monumental olives with an estimated 1,640 years, fourth in its own age ranking behind Ata Ağaç in Milas at 3,200, a tree at Bayat in Soma at 2,090 and one at Gökçeköy in Saruhanlı at 2,005. Both of the Kırkağaç figures are attributions; no laboratory dating of this tree was located, and the survey's own text warns that olive ages shift from source to source because hollow, twisted trunks defeat ring-counting.

On measurements the record splits. The plan gives a trunk 10.6 metres across, a crown 13 metres wide and a height of 6.84 metres. The 2025 survey measures the trunk circumference at 10.30 metres and the diameter at 3.28 metres. The 10.6 figure, called a diameter in the plan, is almost certainly the circumference mislabelled; the two perimeter figures, 10.30 and 10.6 metres, are close but not reconciled, and no measuring height is published for either.

The tree still bears olives of four local cultivars — Memecik, Edremit, Uslu and Trilye — the accumulated result of grafting over generations. The four varieties are named in the plan itself, four cultivars grafted onto the one trunk, which the plan reads as the work of successive generations of growers, and this is the basis for its claim that the tree, still fruiting, is the world's oldest fruiting olive. The same plan calls it Turkey's oldest tree and the world's third-oldest tree outright, claims the 2025 survey's age table does not support.

A local tradition holds that Mary planted the tree for the child Jesus while passing through Kırkağaç on the way from Bergama to Efes. The plan adds that the Dutch researcher Ticia Verveer took samples and reported in 2016, by message to the Kırkağaç district governorate, that carbon testing made the tree contemporary with Jesus. Neither the tradition nor the Verveer test is treated here as established; the test is not on record as a peer-reviewed result, and no publication by Verveer was located.

The same 2025 survey records further old olives in Bakır at 9.90 metres circumference (estimated 1,260 years), 8.80 metres (1,120 years) and 6.50 metres (1,040 years), and at Musahoca in Kırkağaç a 7.40-metre tree estimated at 1,180 years. The tree stands, then, in one of the densest concentrations of ancient olives recorded in Turkey, a cluster the survey documents as part of the same Akhisar and Kırkağaç project that produced its tables.

The ministry's Tabiat Varlıklarını Koruma Genel Müdürlüğü commissioned a survey of Manisa's registered anıt ağaç, completed as a report in 2020, and in 2021 a rehabilitation and restoration procurement covering all registered anıt ağaç in Manisa and Muğla, with signage, maintenance and rehabilitation work, an administrative programme that takes in this tree's neighbourhood. No record was found that oil is pressed from the tree itself.

From the public record: webdosya.csb.gov.tr · dergipark.org.tr

Anıt Zeytin of Haydarköy, Mut

Haydarköy, Mut, Mersin, Turkey · registered anıt ağaç under decision 23.12.2009/5577 of the regional board for the protection of natural assets; age recorded as 1,300 years

The tree stands just west of the village of Haydarköy, recorded in the provincial register as Haydar Mahallesi, in the Mut district of Mersin, in the valley of the Göksu River below the Toros mountains. The village sits on the eastern bank of the Göksu, west of the D.715 highway, 32 kilometres from Mut town and 137 kilometres from Mersin, at about 190 metres above sea level. The district's economy runs on olives, apricots, pomegranates and figs, with olive growing the oldest of the crops.

The registration is on the administrative record. The Mersin Çevre Düzeni Planı, the provincial environmental plan, lists the tree in its table of registered monumental trees as row 7: Mersin, Mut, Haydar Mahallesi, olive (Olea europaea L.), age 1,300, a single tree, under a decision dated 23.12.2009 and numbered 5577. The English-language reporting describes the designation as the work of a regional board for the protection of natural assets. The register's decisions run from 1982 through 2011, which places this 2009 registration among the newer ones. The plan's own section on natural monuments defines a tabiat anıtı as a natural feature of scientific value protected within the principles of the national parks law, the framework the anıt ağaç register sits within. The decision text itself has not been opened here.

The recorded age is 1,300 years. The Hürriyet Daily News report gives 'around 1,316 years'. The Aegean Geographical Journal survey of 2025 lists the tree at 6.30 metres circumference and 2.00 metres diameter with an estimated 1,300 years, and its caption states that the tree was registered in 2009 and determined to be 1,300 years old. The encyclopedic record names the forestry authorities as the ones who set the figure. No laboratory dating has been published; the figure appears to be the estimate recorded at registration, and the survey's text warns that olive ages vary between sources because the trunks are hollow and twisted.

The measurements split between the two accounts. The Hürriyet report gives the trunk diameter as 178 centimetres, the canopy span as 7.5 metres and the height as 5.5 metres. The 2025 survey's circumference of 6.30 metres implies a diameter of about 2.00 metres. The two diameter figures, 1.78 and 2.00 metres, are not reconciled, and no measuring height is published for either.

The tree still produces olives every harvest season in October, when local people collect the fruit by hand. The head of the local chamber of agriculture, Muharrem Yılmaz, told Hürriyet that the tree is a living record of the region's agricultural history, that olive farming covers nearly 269,000 decares in the area, and that the tree 'has stood for over 1,300 years, continues to bear fruit and is cherished by the community.' The chamber's figure marks the district as one of Mersin's main olive producers. The same report quotes an official identified as Çıraklı saying that olive trees are immortal if left standing and keep producing as long as they are not cut down.

The Mersin plan lists three further registered anıt zeytin in the Mut district — at Çortak, 820 years; Kurtuluş, 650 years; and Hacısait, 435 years — which the Hürriyet report compresses as three monumental olives aged 450 to 800 years. The plan registers monumental olives elsewhere in the province as well, among them a Sarıulak olive at Karadiken, Tarsus, at 820 years and an olive at Keben, Silifke, at 810 years, and it lists two natural monuments, the Ana Ardıç juniper and the Koca Katran cedar, at Çamlıyayla, alongside a registered plane tree at Mut town centre dated to a 1982 decision. The same table runs across the province, from a palm grove at Akdeniz to olives, plane trees, junipers and oaks at Tarsus, Silifke, Gülnar and Toroslar, so the Mut tree is one entry in a province-wide register. Within Mersin the Haydarköy tree is recorded as the oldest of the registered olives.

The claim, repeated on the encyclopedic record, that the tree is the oldest in Turkey does not survive the academic record: the 2025 survey ranks Ata Ağaç in Milas at 3,200 years and several Manisa olives above 2,000 years, all ahead of this tree's 1,300. No record was found that oil is pressed from this particular tree.

From the public record: hurriyetdailynews.com · webdosya.csb.gov.tr · dergipark.org.tr · en.wikipedia.org

Ata Ağaç (Elder Tree)

Milas, Muğla, Turkey · luminescence-dated (OSL/IRSL) by Şahiner, Polymeris, Atlihan, Aktürk and Meriç, Journal of Quaternary Science 35(5), 706-715, 2020; planting attributed to roughly 3,000 years ago

The tree stands in an olive garden in the Milas district of Muğla province, in the south-western Aegean of Turkey. Ata Ağaç means elder tree, and the study that dated it places it between the ancient cities of Miletus, on the Didim-Aydın side, and Iasos, on the Milas-Muğla side. Its trunk measures about 41 feet, roughly 12.5 metres, in circumference, a size the 2019 reporting compared to the Vouves olive of Crete, the tree most often cited as the world's oldest, at 3,000 to 4,000 years and declared a Greek national monument in 1997. The Aegean Geographical Journal compilation of 2025 records the circumference at 12.56 metres and the diameter at 4.00 metres.

The dating method was chosen because olive trunks defeat the standard ones. Old olives are largely hollow, the centre rots out and the growth rings twist, so neither dendrochronology nor radiocarbon on the wood can reach a first ring. Prof. Niyazi Meriç, director of the Institute of Nuclear Sciences at Ankara University, told the Anadolu Agency that ring-counting and carbon dating would be problematic 'for the tree in Milas as it is still alive.' The team dated the ground instead. Luminescence dating measures the radiation dose stored in sediment grains since they were last exposed to sunlight; the Newsweek account, citing the United States Geological Survey, describes photons released from stored radiation when a sample is light-stimulated, revealing when the soil last saw daylight. Sediment lying beneath and around the roots, laid down when the tree was planted, is therefore read as the planting date. Meriç described collecting soil from seven different parts of the root zone, and the paper presents the result as an indirect date for the planting event, a pilot study rather than a direct measurement of the tree itself.

The study was carried out with Eren Şahiner, Georgios S. Polymeris, M. Altay Atlihan of Pamukkale University and Selçuk Aktürk of Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University. It was published as 'Indirect dating of an olive tree planting event using luminescence of the sediments lying beneath the roots of the tree: a pilot study in the south-western part of Anatolia, Turkey' in the Journal of Quaternary Science, volume 35, issue 5, pages 706 to 715, in 2020. It applied two protocols, optically stimulated luminescence on quartz and infrared stimulated luminescence on feldspar, and discusses preheating plateaus, equivalent-dose statistics and dose rates from gamma spectrometry. The abstract describes it as the first age reported for an olive tree in the eastern Mediterranean and the first experimental evidence that olives were cultivated in the region since the Iron Age.

The public figure came before the paper. In November 2019 Meriç told the Anadolu Agency and Newsweek that the tree had been planted roughly three millennia ago, around 1000 BCE, and that writing the article for an international journal was still in progress. An earlier assessment by agricultural engineers of the Turkish ministry, based on trunk size, had put the tree at at least 1,500 years. The 2025 Aegean Geographical Journal compilation reads the same study's result as 3,200 years. The press figure and the compilation figure differ by roughly two centuries, a spread no source explains, and both are attributed; the calibrated result inside the paper could not be checked here because the full text is paywalled.

The 2019 coverage reported that the tree was planted on ground that had been a Roman burial site. That detail comes from the press reports, not from the paper's abstract, which locates the tree only between Miletus and Iasos and notes that the dating of the associated palaeochannel sediments is presented for the first time in the dating literature.

The tree still fruits, and its olives go to the mill. An English-language feature places it in a grove owned by Hatice and Aydın Aktürk, who put the surrounding trees at between 100 and 3,500 years old and market a brand, Ancient Cure 3200, named for the tree's attributed age. The ownership and the brand rest on that single feature. The same reporting records that the garden operator, ATA Agac, said the luminescence test is not suitable for determining the age of olive trees; the dispute is on the record but unexplained.

No registration instrument for the tree was found. It appears in academic compilations of Turkey's monumental olives, but no tescil decision, no gazette entry and no entry on the ministry's anıt ağaçlar register surfaced during this research, and the ministry portal that the compilations cite, anitagaclar.gov.tr, returned no reachable page.

From the public record: newsweek.com · aa.com.tr · acikerisim.mu.edu.tr:8080 · dergipark.org.tr · honestcooking.com

Bidnija olive grove (Iż-Żebbuġ tal-Bidnija)

Bidnija, Mosta, Malta · 20 veteran trees; sampled trunks radiocarbon dated CE 1450-1669

The grove comprises twenty veteran olive trees close to the village of Bidnija, three kilometres north-west of Mosta in northern Malta, inside a delimited tree protection area. All twenty have been pollarded at a height of around two metres, several are now recumbent or collapsed through advanced age, and all have largely hollow centres. The site is surrounded by small fields and is adjacent to a limestone promontory on which the remains of a Roman-age villa, Tal-Bidni, were discovered in 1912. Genetic work by Mazzitelli, Calleja, Sardella, Farrugia and Zammit-Mangion, published in Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution in 2015, found the grafts from the Bidnija trees to be clones of one another, with samples from the upper and lower crown of the same tree sharing one genotype and so indicating no secondary top-grafting, and an allelic pattern close to cultivars grown in northern Tunisia. The trees are taken to be of the old indigenous Bidni variety.

The dating is the most precise thing on the site's record and it is a peer-reviewed result. Jonathan G. A. Lageard of Manchester Metropolitan University, Daniel Sultana of the Junior College at the University of Malta and the Environment and Resource Authority, and Francis Q. Brearley of Manchester Metropolitan University published 'Veteran trees in an historic landscape: The Bidnija olive grove, Malta' in Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 38 (2021) 103094. They visited the grove in January 2016 to map and sample it. Six trees, numbered T1, T5, T8, T17, T18 and T20, appeared to contain intact central wood five to twenty centimetres from the base of the trunk, and small wood samples were removed with a pruning saw under special licence for the removal of biological material under the Environmental Protection Act 2001, overseen by the Malta Environment and Planning Authority, now the Environment Resources Authority. Samples of between two and six grams went to Beta Analytic in Miami for acid-alkali-acid pretreatment and standard AMS radiocarbon analysis, calibrated with OxCal 4.4.2 and IntCal20. The three samples judged to have come from close to a central pith returned 370 ± 30 BP for T8, 340 ± 30 for T20 and 270 ± 30 for T18, falling within a two-sigma calibrated range of CE 1450 to 1669. The authors place the grove in the mid to late Middle Ages, the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries or slightly earlier, and state that their estimates are termini ante quem, since fungal hyphae and the possibility of multiple piths cannot be entirely excluded.

The paper's own conclusion is about what the date displaces. It records that the assumption the trees are relics contemporary with the Roman landscape is widely held, and sets out the evidence behind it: San Pawl Milqi, excavated in the 1960s, with two presses and several crushers, and Tal-Bidni, both on the lower slopes of the Burmarrad catchment and thought to represent a landscape geared to olive oil production for export rather than local need; and the Burmarrad sediment core, in which a rise in Olea pollen around 1800 cal BP is read as the Roman-period increase in olive production. The mid to late medieval date, the authors write, precludes comparison with those pollen records. They add that the trees, being tall pollards rather than coppices, could indicate the same land use back to the Roman period and beyond, the living trees representing a relatively recent phase in a continuum of replanting and management. Official and press accounts have not followed the correction: the Ambjent Malta and Heritage Malta announcements of 7 January 2021 describe the grove as Roman-era with trees 'as old as 1,800 years', while other reporting of the same agreement calls them more than 600 years old. Both figures continue to circulate alongside the radiocarbon range.

The protection is layered and old. The paper cites Subsidiary Legislation 445.02, the List of Historical Trees having an Antiquarian Importance Order, made by Government Notice 269 of 1933, as the law protecting the grove; the Maltese legislation portal carries that Order under the same ELI reference. The site is a scheduled Tree Protection Area, an Area of Ecological Importance and a Site of Scientific Importance, the three designations the two entities cited in 2021, and it is covered by the Trees and Woodlands Protection Regulations, which the entities' 2021 statements refer to in their 2011 form and which now stand as the Trees and Woodlands Protection Regulations, 2018, Legal Notice 258 of 2018, protecting some ninety tree species and giving the Environment and Resources Authority its enforcement and mitigation powers.

On 7 January 2021 Ambjent Malta and Heritage Malta signed a memorandum of understanding on the grove, announced by Aaron Farrugia as minister for the environment, climate change and planning and José Herrera as minister for national heritage, the arts and local government. Its measures: occasional pruning of dead branches and restorative pruning by qualified gardeners of Ambjent Malta's afforestation section, under permit from the Environment and Resources Authority; testing for Xylella fastidiosa, which is not present in Malta and for which every tree in the grove has tested negative; genetic testing and polyphenol analysis with the University of Malta; propagation of Bidni olives by air layering, growing rooted saplings directly on the branches of the parent plant; CCTV; fire prevention; and restoration of dilapidated rubble walls. A separate agreement involving Heritage Malta, the University of Malta and the Superintendence for Cultural Heritage was signed earlier in 2021 covering the cultural heritage conservation of the site. Access for the 2016 sampling was facilitated by the site co-owner, Mrs Josephine Austad. The grove is a heritage site rather than a working farm, and no record was found of oil pressed from these trees.

From the public record: doi.org · maltawildplants.com · newsbook.com.mt · independent.com.mt · legislation.mt · ecolex.org

Echraf Olive Tree

El Haouaria, Cap Bon, Nabeul Governorate, Tunisia · recognised by the Tunisian Olive Institute as Africa's oldest olive; age attributed to the Phoenician era

The tree grows at Echraf, in the municipality of El Haouaria at the northern tip of the Cap Bon peninsula, in the governorate of Nabeul. The published dimensions are a height of 10 metres, branches spreading 12 metres, a canopy covering 220 square metres, and roots reaching 21 metres down. The figures come from the syndicated story in its records-institute and news versions, and no measuring body is named for them.

The recognition on the record is the claim that the Tunisian Olive Institute (Institut de l'Olivier) has recognised the Echraf tree as Africa's oldest olive. The account appears in a story that ran through Tunisian state news and the Saudi Press Agency, carried by the Gulf Herald and Riyadh Daily. The Institute's own publication of the recognition was not located.

The age is given as more than 2,500 years, which the same accounts attribute to the Phoenician era, the period in which Phoenicians and later Carthaginians planted olives across Tunisia. A separate Tunisian olive-oil account gives the same age and dates the planting to the Punic period. The figure is an attribution, not a dated measurement; no carbon date or ring count for the tree has been published in any source opened.

The tree's oil carries a distinct almond-like flavour, a point on which the portal and news accounts agree, describing it as a cherished local product.

Production has fallen. The syndicated story reports that fifteen years ago the tree gave around 600 kilograms of oil, that last year it gave 250, and that in some years it yields no olives at all, the decline laid to drought and a changing climate. These figures come from a single agency story.

The prior holder of the African-oldest claim was the Akkarit tree at Douiret in the south, put at about 900 years in the same accounts; the Echraf tree displaced it in the portals' telling. No protection instrument for the Echraf tree was found — no ministry decision, gazette reference or register number — and the preservation efforts the accounts describe remain local and voluntary.

From the public record: thegulfherald.com · alriyadhdaily.com · olyfo.com

Georgia's Old Olive Groves (Mount Urta, Hetta, Tsapshchi)

Zugdidi region, Georgia · ages of ~200-250 years attributed via Soviet-era literature, reported secondhand; no protection instrument

Georgia has no iconic ancient olive in the sense the Mediterranean's named trees do. Its record is of old groves rather than a single landmark specimen, and the numbers attached to them are thin and secondhand. The seed row for this portrait pointed to Mount Urta and the villages of Hetta and Tsapshchi in the Zugdidi region.

The ages on record for those trees are 200 to 250 years, and they reach this portrait through a single channel. The Spanish news site Olive Press, reporting in 2019 on a Georgian olive revival, states that olive trees on Mount Urta are recorded as up to 250 years old and that trees in Hetta and Tsapshchi are estimated at 200 to 250 years, citing Soviet-era scientific literature 'from the 40s to the mid-80s'. No Soviet source is named, and none was opened.

A Georgian academic source confirms the historical presence without the ages. Nino Orjonikidze and Nino Liparteliani of Gori State Teaching University, writing on investments in Georgian olive production, state that olive trees are spread, along with laurel plants, on Urta Mountain, and that olive culture was established in Georgia by monks at New Athos in 1879, with a large plantation later turned into a Soviet farm. They record that olives were abundant in Tbilisi at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, when 60 to 78 tons of fruit a year were harvested, and that after 1927 olive production was reassigned by the central state to Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. The old Georgian varieties, including the oil variety 'Tbilisuri', survive, they write, only as separate trees.

The modern condition bears that out. The same authors note that the old varieties largely no longer exist or survive only as individual trees, and that new plantations are established mainly with seedlings imported from Turkey. The 2019 Olive Press report describes a planting of 20,000 olive seedlings in eastern Georgia in 2010 as part of a revival, and quotes the Georgian chef Tekuna Gachechiladze that once upon a time olives grew in Georgia naturally.

What is missing from the record is what this portrait usually carries. No individual tree at Urta, Hetta or Tsapshchi is named in any source opened. No measurements of any Georgian olive were found, no protection instrument, no register entry, and no named laboratory or survey behind the age figures. The age of 200 to 250 years stands as a secondhand attribution to literature that has not been examined.

From the public record: theolivepress.es · dpublication.com

Gerontoelia st' Adisarou (Throuba Naxou)

Adisarou, Damarionas, Naxos, Greece · trunk diameter 10.8 m, perimeter 29 m; whole-genome sequenced as 'Throuba Naxou'

The tree stands at Vrysi t' Adisarou, near Damarionas on Naxos, below the Byzantine castle of Apaliros, beside the spring that gives the place its name, among tall plane trees and near a small chapel of Saint Isidore that Naxos accounts put at some five hundred years old. The main trunk has been lost over time and divided into many limbs. The figures published for it are a trunk diameter of 10.8 metres and a perimeter of 29 metres, large enough that visitors stand inside the trunk to be photographed. No measuring body is named for either figure. The variety is given locally as throumpolia of the Aegean.

The age claim and the age estimate in the literature are two different things. The agronomist and researcher Giorgos Kostelenos, who brought the tree forward, works from an assumed radial growth of one millimetre a year and on that basis estimates 5,000 to 6,000 years, presenting it as a pre-Minoan tree and probably the oldest olive in the world. That method is his own and no laboratory dating of the tree has been published. The two peer-reviewed papers that name the tree carry a lower figure and carry it as an estimate rather than a result. Tourvas and colleagues, writing in Frontiers in Genetics on 4 December 2023, describe 'the over 3,000 years old monumental olive tree Throuba Naxou' and 'a monumental tree from Naxos island with an estimated age of over 3,000 years'. Naxos press repeats 5,000 to 6,000, and the catalogue row carries a claim of over 5,000. None of these is a dated measurement.

What the peer-reviewed work does establish is genetic. Tourvas, Ganopoulos, Koubouris, Kostelenos, Manthos, Bazakos, Stournaras, Molassiotis and Aravanopoulos, working across the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, the Hellenic Agricultural Organization ELGO-DIMITRA and the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research, genotyped the tree with ten SSR markers. 'Throuba Naxou' proved to share an identical contracted multilocus genotype with the commercially available clone 'Throuba' and the reference sample 'Throubolia', clustering with a putative wild sample from central Greece and two cultivated samples from Ikaria. The authors write that the genetic profile matching of 'Throuba Naxou' with the 'Throubolia' cultivar, together with an uncovered gene exchange event from the wild into the cultivated gene pool, are indications supporting the hypothesised role of the Greek region as a hotspot of oleiculture evolution. The same tree was included in a whole-genome scan of 89 olive genotypes from across the Mediterranean basin published by Bazakos and colleagues in The Plant Journal in 2023, examined there to characterise the possible origin and routes of olive domestication.

No designation protects it. On 14 May 2018 the Municipality of Naxos and the Small Cyclades held an event at the Iakovos Kampanellis Municipal Theatre at which Kostelenos presented the tree, having examined a shoot from it and concluded that the whole tree is cultivated rather than wild, which he read as evidence of ancient grafting knowledge. He cited olive stones from the area dated to 1500 BC and identified with finds from pre-Minoan Crete, a match reported from him without a published excavation reference. The mayor, Manolis Margaritis, asked him for a chapter for a municipal volume on the island's monuments and for cuttings to plant at visible points on the island, and the municipality stated an intention to work with the competent bodies on certification and promotion, to assess the tree's condition and to take the conservation measures needed to slow its deterioration. No designation, decision or register entry has surfaced since. No owner is named, and no record was found of oil pressed from the tree.

From the public record: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov · frontiersin.org · naxostimes.gr

Mastrinka (Old Olive of Kaštel Štafilić)

Kaštel Štafilić, Kaštela, Split-Dalmatia, Croatia · botanical natural monument, Kaštela municipal assembly decision 1990; City of Kaštela spatial plan listing

The tree stands in the courtyard of the 'Maslina' kindergarten in Kaštel Štafilić, one of the seven coastal settlements that make up the City of Kaštela in Split-Dalmatia County, on the shore between Split and Trogir. Locally it is called Mastrinka, the 'oldest Kaštelanka'. The Split-Dalmatia tourist board and the Kaštela city portal both describe it as an exceptional monument of nature. Its trunk has a girth of six metres, its crown a diameter of twenty-two metres, and its height is given as ten metres; no measuring body is named for any of these figures.

The root system is the feature the sources single out. The tree has no single main taproot; instead a root system has developed over an area of roughly one hundred metres, a configuration described in the same terms by the Kaštela portal and the tourist board. The variety is an oil cultivar, uljarica, with small leaves and small fruit. The same accounts say no tree of this variety remains in the wider region today, and assume the seed was brought from southern Italy or Greece in antiquity. The Kaštela portal places the planting ground in its Roman frame: the land between Salona and Tragurium was farmed in the first century AD, was divided among veteran soldiers under the emperor Claudius, and the article suggests Roman veterans may have carried olive seed to the settlement of Siculi near today's Resnik.

The age is carried by every account and attributed by none. The tourist board, the Kaštela portal and Skrivena Dalmacija all state the tree is more than 1,500 years old, and the 2004 Kaštela portal article repeats 'more than 1500 years'. No source names who made the estimate or by what method, and no institution treats the figure as settled. Croatian Post fixed the round number in the philatelic record on 20 April 2001, issuing a commemorative stamp, mark number 391, called '15 centuries of olive in Kaštel Štafilić'.

The protection is recorded twice, once as an event and once in the planning file. The Kaštela portal records that the tree was declared a monument of nature, spomenik prirode, by a decision of the Kaštela municipal assembly in 1990. The City of Kaštela spatial plan, the prostorni plan uređenja Grada Kaštela in its third amendments, lists 'Stara maslina u dječjem vrtiću u Kaštel Štafiliću', the old olive in the kindergarten, among the botanical natural monuments of the city, under the Nature Protection Act NN 80/13, with the national Bioportal given as the source of the map. The 1990 decision's number and its gazette text have not been located.

The tree has been worked on as a patient. The Kaštela portal describes the trunk as damaged, the central part dead, a cavity, with the sap flowing through the outer layer of bark, which also shields the inner support, and the upper crown weakened and diseased. A rehabilitation and revitalization project was prepared, and treatment has been carried out in cooperation with the Institute for Adriatic Cultures, the Institut za jadranske kulture. The same article records the tree in the kindergarten courtyard in the ownership of the Perišić family.

Presentation of the tree runs through Skrivena Dalmacija, Hidden Dalmatia, which operates educational paths and schools in nature under the name 'Old Olive Tree', run from a visitor centre at sv. Nikole Tavelića 1 in Dugopolje. Its page on the tree carries a section called 'Interpretation infrastructure of Old olive tree', and the EU project 'Hidden Habitats' appears in the organization's navigation. The workshop built around the tree, 'Olive, her majesty', teaches children the legends attached to Mastrinka and how to make soap.

No bottled commercial product from the tree is on record. The Skrivena Dalmacija account describes the tree as gifting its caretakers 'pure golden oil' in return for their care, an informal arrangement. The trunk is split and partly hollow, and the sources agree that all parts of the tree remain alive.

From the public record: dalmatia.hr · web.archive.org · skrivenadalmacija.hr · kastela.hr

Mother Olive of Kalamata (Mana Elia)

Kalamata, Messinia, Greece · Preserved Monument of Nature, Ministry of Agriculture decision 200995/7950/1979, gazetted 121/τ.Δ/1980

The tree stands inside the city of Kalamata, at 85 Lakonikis Street, filling the courtyard of what was the Centre for Agricultural Education (KEGE) and is now the Institute of Olive Tree, Subtropical Crops and Viticulture of ELGO-DIMITRA, at N 37.039298, E 22.120737 and about 14 metres above sea level. Its trunk has a perimeter of 8.97 metres and a diameter of roughly 3 metres. At 2.5 metres the trunk divides into six thick arms, of which the sixth no longer exists, having come down in bad weather in 1997, and the branch tips reach 12 metres above the ground. It is a representative tree of the variety 'Aetonycholia Kalamon', held to be the mother plant of the 'Kalamon' cultivar, with large leaves and a large elongated ovoid fruit that recalls an almond or a grape berry, the 'aetonychi' or eagle's claw from which the variety takes its name.

The age has been revised upward once, on record. The working estimate had been 800 years. Research by Dr Panagiotis Bazigos, forester and General Director of the Region of the Peloponnese, based on two core samples he took during an inspection carried out on 23 August 2001, gave an approximate age of 1,733 years, which would put the planting around the fourth century AD. Bazigos also wrote that, absent violent acts or obstacles to its growth, the tree could live for many centuries more and theoretically remain immortal. Municipal and ELGO-DIMITRA announcements now use the rounded 1,700 years. A public broadcaster report carries a different figure again, 1,500 years, attributed to the geologist and biotechnologist Panagiotis Katsaris. Messinia Live's own data panel on the tree gives the span as roughly 850 to 2,000 years. Every one of these is an attribution; no agreed figure exists.

The protection is the firmest part of the record. The tree was declared a Preserved Monument of Nature in 1980 by decision number 200995/7950/1979 of the Ministry of Agriculture, published as decree 121/τ.Δ/1980. One account of the same act dates the gazette to 21 February 1980 and describes the tree as designated both as a centenarian tree and as representative of the Kalamata olive variety. The primary gazette text has not been opened here.

The story attached to it comes through the same broadcaster report, from Katsaris: that when Ibrahim invaded the Peloponnese in 1826 he burned the crops and uprooted the fruit and olive trees, that this tree alone came through intact, and that after liberation residents took cuttings from it to replant, so establishing the variety. The report adds that cuttings continue to be supplied from it to every continent.

The Municipality of Kalamata and ELGO-DIMITRA now open the tree and the 'Mana Elia' demonstration field around it together. The field holds a collection of 20 of the most significant and rarest Greek olive varieties, the Institute of Olive Tree, Subtropical Crops and Viticulture being the National Conservator of important tree varieties in Greece. The work of presenting the tree has been carried out with the funding of the Captain Vasilis and Carmen Konstantakopoulou Foundation and the support of the municipality. An open day was held for World Olive Day on 26 November, with tastings run by the institute's panel, and the site has been opened to visitors on weekday mornings from 2 July to 31 August 2026. No record was found of oil pressed from the tree itself.

From the public record: ertnews.gr · messinialive.gr · olivenews.gr · pna.gr · tharrosnews.gr

Old Kaninjot Olive of Kanina

Kanina (Kanine), near Vlorë, Albania · no protection instrument located; catalogue age of c. 1,200 years not traceable to an opened source

Kanina, also written Kanine, is a village on a hill above the Bay of Vlorë in southwestern Albania. Its name is attached to the olive variety grown around it. The cultivar Kalinjot, also written Kaninjot, is described in a 2025 study in the Italian Journal of Food Science as the most important autochthonous cultivar in Albania and as believed to originate from the village of Kanina in the Vlora region, a claim the study attributes to Ismaili (2017). The old Kaninjot tree the catalogue names at Kanina belongs to this same variety and region.

The cultivar dominates the country's olive surface. Dodona, Ismaili, Cimato, Imeri and Vorpsi's 'Administration of biodiversity of the autochthonous olive trees in Albania', published in Research Journal of Agricultural Science 42 (2) in 2010, records that the most popular variety, Kalinjot, covers 45 per cent of the total olive area. The same paper lists the 'ancient olive trees of the Vlora region (Kanine, Bestrove, Narte, Panaja, Trevllazer, Dhermi, Himare, Palase, Qeparo, Borsh)' among the main centers of olive diversity in Albania, beside the Tirana region list, and reports that RAPD analysis of 22 Albanian cultivars supports the autochthonous origin of the country's olive trees.

The 2025 Italian Journal of Food Science study characterizes two monovarietal Kalinjot extra virgin olive oils and confirms the cultivar as the country's most common. Both samples conformed to EU quality standards for free acidity, peroxide value and extinction coefficients, and the study concludes that the monovarietal oil has potential for a protected geographical indication.

The catalogue age of about 1,200 years for the Kanina tree, attributed to morphological and molecular analyses in a conference paper, could not be traced to an opened source. The repositories that carried the underlying morphometric study were offline when checked: the Iranian scientific citation centre page for 'Determining the Age of Olive Trees through Morphometric Methods' and the IJAIR download site both failed to respond. What is on record is the method's existence. The study, by Hairi Ismaili of the Agricultural University of Tirana and Zaim Veshaj, modeled trunk and neck growth for the Kaninjot and Ulli i Bardhë cultivars in 2014; a later study in the Turkish journal Arkeoloji Bilimleri Dergisi cites its finding that circumferential growth increases with age while annual thickening decreases, and its use of the neck as the tree's main regenerative organ.

The antiquity of olive growing around Kanina rests on a different kind of record. Suela Xhyheri's 'Olive and Olive Oil in Albania, From Antiquity Until the Middle Ages', presented at ICRAE2014, states that for the earliest periods in Albania the sources are missing and that the data from antiquity, coming mainly from the archaeological cities, belongs mainly to olive stones and to vessels for the storage and transport of oil. The same paper places the excavated production later: oil workshops are recorded at the Episcopal complex at Byllis, St Michael's church at Kostar, the monastery at Kamenos in Delvinë, church no. 7 at Kamenicë, the church of St Mary at Sinjë and the monastery at Ardenica, and the best medieval examples come from the village of Kamenicë, where five olive oil workshops are preserved, one belonging to church no. 7. The claim that mill or vessel evidence dates Albanian olive processing to the sixth century BC is not supported by this source.

No opened source describes the specific old Kaninjot tree at Kanina, its measurements, its condition or any protection instrument. The portrait therefore rests on the cultivar's record and on the region's documented ancient olive presence, with the tree itself carried only by the catalogue.

From the public record: rjas.ro · konferenca.unishk.edu.al · itjfs.com · arkeolojibilimleridergisi.org

Old Olive Tree of Brijuni (Brijunka)

Veliki Brijun, Brijuni National Park, Istria, Croatia · C-14 attribution of c. 1,600 years by Ruđer Bošković Institute (1960s), unreconciled with modern 14C samples

The tree stands on Veliki Brijun, the largest island of the Brijuni archipelago off the Istrian coast, inside the national park that takes the islands' name. The park's flora pages record it as Olea europaea and describe it as one of the oldest olive trees in the Mediterranean. Its crown projection is given as 22 by 8 metres and its height as 6 metres.

The park attributes the age to a named institution and a named method. Research carried out on samples of this tree by the Ruđer Bošković Institute in Zagreb in the 1960s, applying the radioactive carbon-14 isotope to a wood sample taken from the trunk, showed the tree to be about 1,600 years old. The 1960s study itself has not been opened here; the account is the park's own.

The same institute now carries a different set of numbers for the same tree. In a presentation by Ines Krajcar Bronić at ISRP-14 in Cordoba in 2018, five samples from the Brijuni olive are listed with conventional radiocarbon ages of 150±20, 130±20, 110±20 and 105±20 BP, calibrating to spans within 1675-1942 AD, and one modern sample at 126.3±0.3 pMC dated 1980-1981. The presentation notes that olive trees do not form clear annual rings, that the most central wood is frequently rotted, and that direct dating of the tree by ring counting or by radiocarbon dating of the pith cannot be carried out; it adds that inner wood within live olive trees has generally not been dated to older than 200-300 years. The park's 1,600-year figure and these results are not reconciled anywhere.

The tree's recorded damage is a storm. During a storm in the 1970s the olive split open, and the wounds were preserved with concrete, at that time a common method in arboriculture. The tree still fruits: over the three years recorded by the park, olives were picked each October, an average of 30 kilograms a year, and that amount yielded on average 4.1 kilograms of extra virgin olive oil. The oil's chemical components were tested at the laboratory of the Public Health Institute in Pula; the best analysis showed 0.11% non-saturated fatty acids and a peroxide number of 1.95.

A 2010 study treated the tree as a named individual. Miljković, Žužić, Pucci, Baldoni, Mariotti and Cultrera published 'Molecular characterization of an ancient Olea europaea tree located on the Brijuni islands (Croatia) by SSR markers analysis' in Pomologia Croatica 16 (1-2), pages 3-12. The abstract describes 'a 1600 years old olive tree' and reports measurements of fruits and leaves carried out on the tree, named Brijunka, and on the standard Istrian cultivar Buga (Buža).

In 2017 the tree and its groves became the subject of a branding project. It was conceived by the National Park Brijuni, the Faculty of Agriculture in Zagreb, the Palunko olive oil factory in Fažana and the Sector for Energy and Environmental Protection at the Croatian Chamber of Economy. Its aim, as representatives of the park stated, was to discern the state and age of the olive groves on Brijuni and in Fažana and eventually to brand Brijuni olive oil. The first research group went to the islands on 3 November 2017: about thirty participants, among them scientists, students, journalists and the public, took fruit samples from the fifteen oldest trees, and scientific advisers from the Ruđer Bošković Institute sampled the oldest olive trees on Brijuni, in Fažana and at Valbadon to ascertain their age. A production company, Nove boje medija, filmed a documentary that was presented at the European Parliament in Brussels at the beginning of 2018. No outcome in the form of a retail product has been confirmed.

From the public record: np-brijuni.hr · web.archive.org · fulir.irb.hr · hrcak.srce.hr · editorial.total-croatia-news.com

Olive of Azorias (Kavousi)

Kavousi, Ierapetra, Lasithi, Crete, Greece · trunk circumference 14.20 m at 0.8 m and 22.10 m at the base; declared Monumental by SEDIK

The tree stands about one kilometre south of the village of Kavousi, at the locality Azoria on the road towards the settlement of Avgo, in the local district of Kavousi in the Municipality of Ierapetra, and very close to the archaeological site of the same name. The register of the Association of Olive-Growing Municipalities of Crete gives its position as N 35° 06.908′, E 25° 51.651′ at 252 metres. Its measurements are recorded at two heights: at 0.8 metres above the ground the trunk has a maximum diameter of 4.95 metres and a perimeter of 14.20 metres, and at the base a maximum diameter of 7.10 metres and a perimeter of 22.10 metres. The municipality's page rounds the first diameter to 4.9 metres. The association records a full survey of the tree's characteristics and condition carried out in 2004. It is of the mastoeidis variety, called mouratolia or mouratoelia locally, grafted onto a wild olive rootstock, and in 2008 it belonged to Georgios Grammatikakis.

The age claim is the municipality's and it is unusually specific. On the basis of the annual-ring method, the Municipality of Ierapetra states, it is calculated that the tree was planted in the period 1350 to 1100 BC. The municipality goes further on its own page, calling the tree a natural monument, the oldest olive in the world, and, because it is grafted onto wild rootstock, the oldest example of grafting in the world. Neither the ring count, its author nor its margin has been published. Ring counts on hollowed olive trunks are not treated as settling an age in Greece, and no Greek olive carries a scientifically agreed one. The dates 1350 to 500 BC that appear alongside the tree belong to the neighbouring settlements, not to it.

The designation is an association's act, not a state one. The Association of Olive-Growing Municipalities of Crete (SEDIK) declared the tree Monumental on two stated grounds: the large dimensions of its trunk, and its position near the ancient settlements of Vrontas, Kastro and Azorias, of the Late Minoan IIIC to Archaic phases, where numerous vessels and olive-pressing implements have been found. No ministerial decision, regional decision or gazette entry for the tree has surfaced.

One event fixes it in the public record. In 2004, following a proposal from residents of the area and from the Municipality of Ierapetra, it was decided that the first winner of the women's marathon at the Athens 2004 Olympic Games would be crowned with a wreath cut from this tree. The wreath was cut at a special ceremony attended by representatives of the authorities, of the Church and a crowd of local people. SEDIK's register page on the tree records that it was co-financed by the Greek State at 25 per cent and by the European Union through the ERDF. No record was found of oil pressed from the tree.

From the public record: ierapetra.gr · polelia.sedik.gr

Olive of Saint Augustine (Thagaste)

Souk Ahras, Algeria · listed 'olivier séculaire Saint Augustin' in the Souk Ahras master plan (SDATW, final 02/2016); legend dated to Augustine's era, 4th century AD

The tree stands on the hill of Sidi Messaoud in Souk Ahras, in north-eastern Algeria, the modern city that covers the buried remains of Thagaste, the Numidian town where Augustine was born in 354. The city's own master plan, the Schéma Directeur d'Aménagement of the wilaya, drawn up in final form in February 2016, lists 'l'olivier séculaire Saint Augustin' among the wilaya's heritage sites, dates it to the Roman era, and records that it draws foreign visitors to the town.

The tradition attached to it is that Augustine meditated beneath the tree, and some versions hold that he planted it himself. A Catholic News Agency story, syndicated through several hosts, reports the legend and places the tree at the centre of the town. It is a legend in the strict sense: no contemporary or early source connects Augustine to any particular olive tree at Thagaste, and nothing in his writings names one.

The scholarly assessment is on the record and it is dismissive with affection. James J. O'Donnell, the Augustine scholar and University Librarian at Arizona State University, told CNA that the claim is 'entirely improbable, but charming'. No other scholarly evaluation of the tree's authenticity or age was found.

Thagaste itself is gone. The CNA story notes that most traces of the ancient city have been lost to centuries of war and weathering, and that modern Souk Ahras sits over the buried town. The ancient bishopric survives only in titular form, held by a serving papal nuncio. That is the background against which the tree matters: it is one of the few tangible things in Souk Ahras that a visitor can attach to the city's most famous son.

Pilgrims and visitors continue to come. The same CNA story says pilgrims regularly visit the site for its connection to the bishop while noting the historical uncertainty. The master plan records the tree as one of the most frequented sites in the wilaya, alongside the archaeological remains of Madaure and Khemissa, and as significant for foreign visitors in particular.

The tree is treated as a monument. An account of a visit to Thagaste on the blog Terrae Transmarinae describes plaques beside the tree commemorating Augustine in four languages — Tamazight, Arabic, French and English — and a chapel built next to it. The same account reports a local folk practice attached to the tree: Muslim parents are said to have buried the foreskins of infant sons around it so the boys would grow up 'as wise as Augustine', a detail the author reads as a measure of how the region holds Augustine in regard. No botanical record of the tree — no measurement, no dating, no variety — was found in any source opened.

The age figure that attaches to the tree is legendary. The 1,700 years that appears in headlines is the interval since Augustine's own lifetime; it dates a tradition, and no measurement of the tree backs it. The tree produces no oil on any record found, and its identification as Augustine's olive rests entirely on local tradition.

From the public record: worldcatholicnews.com · terraetransmarinae.com · al24news.dz · souk-ahras.mta.gov.dz

Olivera de les Quatre Potes (Olivo de las cuatro patas)

Canet lo Roig, Castellón, Spain · Sénia inventory no. 2,296, trunk 5.70 m; AEMO Mejor Olivo Monumental de España 2016

The tree stands in the paraje of Rajos, in Canet lo Roig, Baix Maestrat. AEMO's 2016 decision document records it as inventoried under number 2,296 in the Inventario de Olivos Milenarios del Territorio del Senia, with a trunk circumference of 5.70 metres, of the Farga variety, on a plain crossed by watercourses along which the Roman Via Augusta ran, and "escoltado por más de 200 olivos también monumentales" that together make up the partida de Rajos. Canet lo Roig holds the largest number of millenary olives of any municipality in the Valencian Community: 1,131 registered as of 2019, presented to visitors through three signposted areas and a marked footpath.

The age is handed straight to its claimants in AEMO's own wording: "sus mentores le estiman una edad aproximada de 1.100 años". No dating study has been made of this tree. Two of its neighbours in the same municipality have been dated by the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid — number 2,767, at the village entrance, to the year 569, and number 2,814 to 527 — but number 2,296 is not among them.

The jury met in Córdoba on 29 April 2016 and awarded the tenth edition of the Premio AEMO al Mejor Olivo Monumental de España. It valued "la probada longevidad del ejemplar, certificada por su perímetro de tronco" together with the appearance of a tree that, rising on its four legs, seems to emerge from the ground turning on itself. The candidacy was presented jointly by Xavi Capafons, the owner, María Teresa Adell, manager of the Mancomunitat Taula del Sénia, and María Ángeles Pallarés, mayor of Canet lo Roig. AEMO records that the prize that year was sponsored by GEA-Westfalia Separator.

The same decision document carries the tree's one piece of human history, and marks it as testimony rather than fact. According to the account of the current owner's grandfather, after the Civil War one of the guerrillas who had come down from "les moles de Xert" while fleeing the Guardia Civil hid inside the hollow trunk of this olive, was not found, and so was able to return to the hills with his companions. Nothing further corroborates it.

The tree is reached from the SL-CV 58, registered with the Federació d'Esports de Muntanya i Escalada de la Comunitat Valenciana as "Ruta de los Olivos Milenarios", a 5.90-kilometre circular route in Canet lo Roig promoted by the town council, homologated on 15 December 2012 and last quality-checked in October 2023; an 800-metre detour from the route leads to the tree itself. Its legal position is thinner than that of the territory's larger trees. Article 4 of Valencian Law 4/2006 of 19 May sets the generic-protection threshold at six metres of trunk circumference measured at 1.30 metres from the base, or 350 years of age; at 5.70 metres the trunk is below the size threshold, the age has never been established by study, and no express declaration or catalogue entry for the tree was located.

From the public record: aemo.es · oliveresmillenaries.com · senders.femecv.com · boe.es

Olivo de las parejas

la Jana, Castellón, Spain · Museo Pou del Mas tree no. 106, trunk over 6.60 m; AEMO Mejor Olivo Monumental de España 2014

The tree stands inside the Museo Natural de Olivos Milenarios Pou del Mas, on the Pou del Mas estate at la Jana, in the Baix Maestrat, which concentrates 21 millenary olives in under a hectare. The museum publishes it as tree number 106, one of nine signposted stops laid out to be followed in order from one to nine, and confirms it as the AEMO prizewinner. The access road to the estate coincides with the line of the Roman Via Augusta, and a 300-metre path is provided for visitors with limited mobility. La Jana holds 970 millenary olives across a municipal territory of 19.5 square kilometres.

AEMO's decision document of 28 April 2014 awarded it the VIII Premio al Mejor Olivo Monumental de España. It records the tree as of the Farga variety, "pudiéndose datar su origen hace 1.500 años", with a trunk split in two from the same union whose thick twisted veins and buds the jury called a living work of art in continuous evolution, a prominent base rising out of the ground, a perimeter above 6.60 metres, and an optimal state of conservation with a healthy and fruitful foliar area. The document places it in the Pou del Mas museum "junto con otros 20 árboles que son también olivos milenarios". The 1,500-year figure is the jury's own, offered without a dating institution or method, and the document does not state the height at which the perimeter was taken.

No laboratory study has been published for number 106, and the record of the Sénia datings suggests why. The Ministerio de Cultura's summary of the Mancomunitat Taula del Sénia's project on the millenary olives of the Territori del Sénia states that, with Banco Santander's sponsorship, the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid had dated two of the territory's olives: number 1,878, la Farga del Arión at Ulldecona, planted in 314 CE, and number 117, la Farga del Pou del Mas at la Jana, planted in 833 CE, in the reign of the emir Abd al-Rahman II. Number 117 stands in the same museum as number 106 and is its dated companion; number 106 is not on that list. The same summary describes the underlying inventory as covering olives above 3.5 metres of trunk circumference at 1.30 metres from the ground, then exceeding 4,800 trees across 22 villages.

The Asociación Territorio Sénia records that the Pou del Mas museum was inaugurated by the subdelegado del Gobierno in Castellón, David Barelles, the president of the Mancomunitat Taula del Sénia, Marcelino Domingo, and la Jana's mayor, Joaquín Lladser, at the opening of the second Encuentro on millenary olives and traditional-variety oils. As at the territory's other Valencian trees, protection is statutory rather than individual: article 4 of Law 4/2006 of 19 May declares generically protected any tree of six metres or more of trunk circumference at 1.30 metres from the base, and the perimeter AEMO published is above that figure, though without a stated measuring height it cannot be matched to the legal test with certainty. No express declaration or catalogue entry number for the tree was located.

From the public record: aemo.es · oliveresmillenaries.com · cultura.gob.es · webfacil.tinet.cat · boe.es

Olivo del Arroyo Carnicero

Casabermeja, Málaga, Spain · AEMO Mejor Olivo Monumental de España 2013; three trunks each over 7 m in perimeter

The tree stands in the municipal district of Casabermeja, in the province of Málaga, close to the town on the road towards Villanueva de la Concepción and beside the stream from which it takes its name. Its town hall places it in the comarca of Campo de Cámara, among a district it describes as holding numerous monumental olives, and near the archaeological remains of a Roman oil mill at the Villa de Aratispi. The town hall's own description calls it an 'auténtica Catedral de madera viva', a genuine cathedral of living wood, rising on three trunks each more than 7 metres in perimeter. No canopy measurement has been published.

What the record fixes precisely is a meeting. On Friday 5 April 2013, at twelve noon, in a room at the Universidad de Córdoba, AEMO sat with the jury for its Premio al Mejor Olivo Monumental de España, and the case for the Olivo del Arroyo Carnicero was put to the professors Luis Rallo and Diego Barranco. Rallo's finding, as the town hall publishes it: 'Podemos afirmar, científicamente, que las tres patas provienen de la misma raíz… que es la de un olivo silvestre o acebuche, porque lo hemos comprobado genéticamente, también que la parte aérea de esas tres patas son injertos de la misma paleovariedad, de momento, no catalogada.' The three limbs come from one root, that of a wild olive or acebuche, verified genetically, and the aerial parts of all three are grafts of the same paleovariety, so far uncatalogued. Barranco's: 'Tiene más de 1000 años, así lo certificamos en la Tesis de Concepción Muñoz,' adding that the tree probably demonstrates that olive growing in the Mediterranean Andalusian provinces of Málaga and Almería began by over-grafting. Muñoz herself could not attend and said by telephone that of all the monumental olives she had visited in Andalusia this was 'el olivo más monumental y más bello'.

The age is therefore an attribution with a named certifier and a named document: more than 1,000 years, certified in Concepción Muñoz's doctoral thesis at the Universidad de Córdoba. The jury's written ruling reads: 'Se premia el valor histórico y monumental de este olivo cuya edad se estima en más de 1000 años. Se trata de un olivo de una paleovariedad no catalogada hasta la fecha que se encuentra injertada en un olivo silvestre.' The ruling closes by placing the tree in a pattern: Málaga and Almería are rich in olives of this kind, over-grafted onto acebuche rootstock with the best-adapted paleovarieties of their day, which the jury reads as explaining how olive growing began in the Mediterranean comarcas of Andalusia.

The candidacy was entered by the Ayuntamiento de Casabermeja through its then mayor, Antonio Domínguez, who told AEMO that the tree was little known to the local population and that the town hall had been encouraged to enter it by Dr Francisco Lorenzo. It became the first olive in Andalusia to take the prize. AEMO's own prize history lists it as the 2013 winner in a series that runs from the Olivo La Farga de l'Ariol at Ulldecona in 2007 to the Olivera del Suavo at Calaceite in 2026, a series otherwise dominated by Castellón, Tarragona and Alicante. AEMO recorded at the time that material from the tree would be entered in the Universidad de Córdoba's germplasm bank.

Beyond the prize the record is thin. No owner is named. No municipal, provincial or Junta de Andalucía protection instrument for the tree was found, and no entry for it surfaced in the Inventario de árboles y arboledas singulares de Andalucía. The genetic verification Rallo describes has not been located as a published paper, and Muñoz's thesis was not opened here.

From the public record: aemo.es · casabermeja.es

Olivo di Sant'Emiliano

Bovara, Trevi, Umbria, Italy · radiocarbon dated 1,830 ± 260 years; trunk 9.10 m in circumference

The tree stands at Bovara, a frazione of Trevi in Umbria, at the locality the regional survey records as Corciano or Carpiano, at about 299 metres, some 200 metres from the Benedictine abbey whose land it historically was. Its trunk circumference at the base is 9.10 metres, its height 5 metres, its crown spread about 8.20 metres. The trunk is no longer intact but deeply fissured and divided, the effect of the torsion very old olives undergo. Genetically it is placed in a transitional position between the oleaster and the Moraiolo cultivar and is recorded as belonging to no cultivar widespread in the area, which the regional survey reads as a distinct ecotype, possibly an ancestral variety of the Spoleto and Terni district; the same survey notes that it has come through the region's repeated winter frosts undamaged.

The dating is attributed to a named team. Radiocarbon analysis by Guido Bonci of CNR-ISAFOM in Perugia, Luigi Campatola of the University of Naples, Giorgio Pannelli of the MIPA olive-growing institute at Spoleto and Luciana Baldoni of CNR-IGV in Perugia gave 1,830 ± 260 years. The year of that study is not stated on any page that reports it. The regional monumental-tree survey carries different numbers for the same tree: an estimated age of 1,599 ± 246 years for the multi-stemmed specimen, alongside a radiocarbon figure of 195 ± 30 years for the wood sampled, a pairing the survey does not explain. Umbrian press and the Fascia Olivata committee use the plainer 1,700 years, a figure taken from the martyrdom date rather than from any measurement, and the committee's page calls the tree simply 'ultra millenario'. On its ranking the sources also split: a trade report and press headlines call it the second-oldest tree in Italy, while the 2021 reporting on the Umbrian list places it fourth among Italy's longest-lived trees and notes that it is the northernmost of them.

The oldest document naming an olive at Trevi is the Passio Sancti Miliani martiris, a ninth-century codex thought to copy one of the fifth or sixth, which records that Emiliano, first bishop of Trevi, was bound 'ad novellam olivam', to a young olive, to be beheaded in 303 or 304. It was published in full in C. Zenobi, Trevi antica, dal neolitico fino al 1214, Foligno, 1995. The identification of that olive with this tree is long-standing local tradition and is not documented by anything in the codex.

The protection sits in three layers. The tree was censused by the Corpo Forestale dello Stato among Italy's monumental trees, the national census having begun in 1982, and it is carried on Umbria's regional list, which Regional Law 28/2001 established and which was published in 2008. Law 10/2013 of 14 January 2013 defined monumental trees nationally and required the regions to compile inventories and transmit them; from 2014 the national Elenco degli alberi monumentali d'Italia has been kept by the agriculture ministry with the Carabinieri Forestali, who conducted the 2021 update counting 174 monumental trees in Umbria, 121 in the province of Perugia and 53 in that of Terni. Two different numbers are published for this tree: Pro Trevi gives 102, the Patriarchi Verdi survey gives regional code 108. In August 2023 the Comune di Trevi, through its deputy mayor for urban planning Saverio Andreani, notified the owners of a prohibition on felling or damaging the tree without municipal authorisation and ministerial approval.

It was fenced in early 2002 so that it could be visited without risk to it, and its health was assessed as good on visual inspection. It has belonged since 1989 to the Crisafulli family, Maria Adele Crisafulli and her brother Andrea. It stands inside the Fascia Olivata Assisi-Spoleto, the 60-kilometre olive belt across Assisi, Spello, Foligno, Trevi, Campello sul Clitunno and Spoleto, which was inscribed on 3 July 2018 in FAO's Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems list, the first Italian territory on it, on a candidacy led by the Comune di Trevi with the Umbria Region, the University of Perugia and Sviluppumbria. No record was found of oil pressed from this tree.

From the public record: fasciaolivata.it · montagneaperte.it · protrevi.com · treviambiente.it · teatronaturale.it · tuttoggi.info · sentierinellafasciaolivata.it · regione.umbria.it

Olivo Mater, conocido como "El Pulpo"

Ulldecona (Arión), Tarragona, Spain · trunk over 6.30 m at 1 m per AEMO 2011; 6.65 m at 1.30 m per the Mancomunitat, 2025

The tree grows in the partida of Arión, in the municipal territory of Ulldecona, on the north face of the Serra de Godall near La Miliana, and it grows on rock. The Asociación Territorio Sénia describes it as sitting "totalmente encima de la roca", and the local name El Pulpo — the octopus — comes from the woody roots that spread across the stone. AEMO's 2011 decision records it on an estate of the Beltrán Ferré family which holds 66 millenary olives in only 6.16 hectares; the Mancomunitat Taula del Sénia repeated the ownership in 2025, noting the family are residents of Alcanar. The adjoining estate belongs to the Porta i Ferré family and carries the Museu Natural de les Oliveres Mil·lenàries de l'Arión; between the two properties there are more than 200 millenary olives, and the Asociación's own accounts of the museum route list El Pulpo among its principal trees, so where the tree sits relative to the museum's boundary is not stated consistently in the record.

The two measurements on record do not match, and neither was taken the same way. AEMO's decision for the V Concurso al Mejor Olivo Monumental de España 2011 gives "un perímetro de tronco superior a los 6.30 m a 1 metro de altura". The Mancomunitat Taula del Sénia, writing in October 2025, gives 665 centimetres at 130 centimetres from the ground. The same AEMO document places the tree "en pleno Baix Ebre", although Ulldecona lies in the Montsià.

The age is not established. AEMO's jury wrote that the root development draws a surprising picture, as though the olive clung eternally to the earth that saw it born "hace (dicen) más de 1.300 años" — the parenthetical "dicen", they say, is AEMO's own. No dating study exists for this tree. Two of its neighbours are on firmer ground: the pair known as the Fargues de l'Arion, on the Porta i Ferré estate, hold registration number AM 22.156.01 in the Generalitat de Catalunya's monumental-tree register, declared by Ordre of 3 September 1997, published in the DOGC of 22 September 1997, number 2480, with total heights of 6.5 and 6.0 metres, trunk girths of 7.90 and 6.10 metres and mean canopies of 16.8 and 14.0 metres; the fiche notes that the Farga is one of Catalonia's oldest olive varieties, calls the two trees "presumiblement mil·lenaris", and records that the Farga received the AEMO prize for best monumental olive in Spain in 2007. El Pulpo carries no such individual declaration. Since 2020 it falls instead under Llei 6/2020, of 18 June, on the protection, conservation and valorisation of monumental olive trees and olive groves, published in the DOGC of 23 June 2020, number 8160, which treats as monumental any olive of 350 centimetres of trunk circumference or more at 130 centimetres from the ground and prohibits extraction and sale; the Generalitat states that monumental olives are excluded from its individual monumental-tree files and are being catalogued separately by the Departament d'Agricultura, Ramaderia, Pesca i Alimentació.

AEMO's 2011 decision also noted that with this award Ulldecona held two winners of the competition, la Farga del Arión from the first edition and now the Mater. The award years for both are recorded inconsistently across the bodies involved: AEMO's prize history and the Generalitat's monumental-tree fiche both put the Farga del Arión in 2007 and the Mater in 2011, while the Ministerio de Cultura's summary of the Mancomunitat's project lists the Farga prize as 2006, and AEMO's own summary listing of monumental-olive winners places the Mater under 2010.

The tree is still worked. On 24 October 2025 the Mancomunitat recorded the harvest of its olives, which are entered in the Mancomunitat's census under the guarantee mark Aceite Farga Milenaria; the picking was done by the Cooperativa de Godall for its premium brand Làcrima Olea Mil·lenària and yielded 150 kilos of Farga olives, in a campaign that had begun on 3 October. The tree also has a photographic record: the Asociación Territorio Sénia notes that GEO magazine's issue 302, of March 2012, carried a nine-page feature with a cover photograph, "Olivos Milenarios del Sénia. Protegiendo las raíces", written by Joaquim M. Pujals with photographs by José Barea, built around an image of El Pulpo on its rock.

From the public record: aemo.es · tauladelsenia.es · webfacil.tinet.cat · mediambient.gencat.cat · portaldogc.gencat.cat · oliveresmillenaries.com · cultura.gob.es

Olivo Milenario de Sant Jordi

Sant Jordi, Castellón, Spain · Sénia inventory no. 41, trunk 7.70 m at 1.30 m; AEMO Mejor Olivo Monumental de España 2025

The tree stands in the partida of Mas Na Cabanes in the municipality of Sant Jordi, in the Baix Maestrat, about 5,700 metres out of the village towards the Panorámica golf course. The Ruta de los Olivos Milenarios, run by the Mancomunitat Taula del Sénia with Turisme Comunitat Valenciana, publishes Sant Jordi as holding 153 catalogued millenary olives, of which eight stand in the Mas Na Cabanes area above the 3.5-metre trunk-perimeter threshold the Sénia inventory uses; the largest of the eight is number 41, measured at 7.70 metres of trunk circumference at 1.30 metres from the ground. It is of the Farga variety, as almost all the Sénia millenary olives are. The Mancomunitat and the town council signposted the area in 2018 under agreements with the owners of two estates, Els Muntells and Mas Na Cabanes, using the same metal flags, lecterns and turned-wood posts installed at the territory's other olive museums and areas; access to Mas Na Cabanes is by the owner's authorisation.

The age is an attribution resting on one study. The Ayuntamiento de Sant Jordi and AEMO both record that the tree was dated in 2017 by Professor Antonio Prieto Rodríguez, catedrático at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, who placed its origin around the year 744. AEMO's 2025 decision document gives the resulting figure as an estimated age of 1,273 years, counted from the date of the study; the Mancomunitat Taula del Sénia, writing in May 2025, gives 1,281 years, counted forward to the year of the award. No dating report has been published that would allow the method to be examined.

AEMO, the Asociación Española de Municipios del Olivo, awarded it the XIX Premio al Mejor Olivo Monumental de España 2025. The jury met in Córdoba in May 2025 and was composed of Angjelina Belaj of the IFAPA Alameda del Obispo in Córdoba, Raúl de la Rosa of the Instituto de Agricultura Sostenible (CSIC), and José Mª Penco for AEMO, acting as secretary. Its written decision cites a trunk of "11,06 metros de perímetro real" and a sinuous, deeply hollowed structure from which the main branches emerge still in production — a second and larger figure than the 7.70 metres the inventory records at 1.30 metres, arrived at by following the trunk's irregular outline rather than a taut tape. The candidacy was presented jointly by the owner, Cristina Marí Sospedra, the Mancomunitat Taula del Sénia, the Ayuntamiento de Sant Jordi and the Asociación Territorio Sénia. Under AEMO's own rules the prize is given to the owner of the tree whoever files the nomination, and the criteria are size, age, estimated production, and aesthetic, historical or cultural interest.

The Mancomunitat records this as the eighth AEMO prize won by a millenary olive of the Territori del Sénia, a tri-regional area between the Valencian Community, Catalonia and Aragon which it says now holds more than 7,000 catalogued trees above 350 centimetres of trunk circumference at 1.30 metres, and which the FAO designated a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System in 2018. The tree is still cropped: the Diari de Tarragona, reporting the award, records up to 160 kilos of olives in some years. Its legal position follows automatically from its size rather than from any individual decree. Article 4 of Valencian Law 4/2006 of 19 May on monumental arboreal heritage declares generically protected, "sin necesidad de resolución singularizada", any tree in the Valencian Community equalling or exceeding six metres of trunk circumference measured at 1.30 metres from the base, among other thresholds; at 7.70 metres this tree is above it. No individual entry for it was located in the Catálogo de árboles monumentales y singulares de la Comunitat Valenciana, whose last published update is dated 23 March 2023.

From the public record: aemo.es · tauladelsenia.es · santjordi.es · oliveresmillenaries.com · diaridetarragona.com · boe.es · mediambient.gva.es

Olivo Mil·lènia

Godall, Tarragona, Spain · Sénia inventory no. 3,715, trunk 7.04 m at 1.30 m; AEMO Mejor Olivo Monumental de España 2021

The tree stands two kilometres out of Godall, in the Montsià, beside the TV-3313 road from Godall to Ulldecona, on an estate belonging to Alexis Albiol, who is also the mayor of Godall and heads the municipal agricultural cooperative. The Ruta de los Olivos Milenarios records it as number 3,715 in the Sénia inventory, the largest of the 146 millenary olives inventoried in Godall, at seven metres of trunk circumference at 1.30 metres from the ground; the same route's account of the AEMO award gives 7.04 metres. AEMO describes it as the Farga variety grafted onto wild olive. The estate was fitted out as a visitable Area of millenary olives under an agreement between the owner, the town council, the Mancomunitat Taula del Sénia and the cooperative, and the tree stands close to the line of the Roman Via Augusta.

Its age is an attribution, and its attribution is itself disputed in the record. The Mancomunitat and the Ruta de los Olivos Milenarios both credit the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid with dating the tree to the year 1018, which made it 1,003 years old at the time of the award. AEMO's own 2021 decision document instead states that the longevity was "certificada la Universidad Complutense de Madrid". Every other record of the Sénia datings names the Politécnica; no reconciliation of the two attributions has surfaced. In 2017 the village held a birthday party for the tree with a thousand candles.

The name is recent and documented. Schoolchildren in Godall chose it during the Mancomunitat Taula del Sénia's European Heritage Stories project, which received a 2018 grant under that programme with the Mancomunitat as grantee and coordinator, and which included a scientific congress, "The Ancient Olive Trees, European Heritage Stories", held in Ulldecona in November 2018; classroom sessions on conservation were followed by a visit at which the pupils measured the trunk. AEMO records the name more briefly, as chosen in Godall to mark the tree's millennial anniversary.

AEMO announced the prize from Córdoba on 1 July 2021. The jury cited a trunk of seven metres of perimeter, a canopy capable of producing up to 120 kilos of olives at that age, and the work the owner, the Ayuntamiento de Godall and the Mancomunitat were doing around the tree — poetic-musical walks, signage in the paraje, and school visits at which pupils hear its history and taste its oil. The candidacy was filed jointly by the Albiol family, the Mancomunitat, the town council and the Godall cooperative, in a municipality where olive grove covers forty per cent of the surface. The prize was handed over that September at the Expoliva fair in Jaén. AEMO's document is headed as the XVIII prize, which does not fit the sequence in its own other records, where 2016 was the tenth edition and 2024 the eighteenth. The fruit goes to the Cooperativa de Godall, which presses it as its premium Làcrima Olea Mil·lenària under the Mancomunitat's guarantee mark Aceite Farga Milenaria.

On the Catalan side of the territory the protection is statutory rather than individual. Llei 6/2020, of 18 June, on the protection, conservation and valorisation of monumental olive trees and olive groves, published in the DOGC of 23 June 2020, number 8160, treats as monumental any olive with a trunk circumference equal to or greater than 350 centimetres at 130 centimetres from the ground, or aged 350 years or more, and prohibits their extraction and sale. The Generalitat notes that its individual monumental-tree files deliberately exclude monumental olives, which are catalogued separately by the Departament d'Agricultura, Ramaderia, Pesca i Alimentació as that work proceeds; no individual file for this tree exists there yet. Catalonia's first census of monumental olives, presented in June 2025, counted 4,160 trees, 3,989 of them in the Terres de l'Ebre and 3,509 in the Montsià alone.

From the public record: aemo.es · oliveresmillenaries.com · europeanheritagedays.com · mediambient.gencat.cat · portaldogc.gencat.cat · tauladelsenia.es

Olivo recuperado de Cervera del Maestre

Cervera del Maestre, Castellón, Spain · Sénia inventory no. 233, trunk 6.95 m at 80 cm; AEMO Mejor Olivo Monumental de España 2024

The tree stands in the paraje known as la Laguna, or la Llacuna, on a low hill above Cervera del Maestre and its medieval castle, in the Baix Maestrat. The Ruta de los Olivos Milenarios lists it as number 233 in the Sénia inventory and presents it explicitly as an example of the recovery of abandoned olive trees. The Mancomunitat Taula del Sénia gives its trunk circumference as 695 centimetres at a height of 80 centimetres from the ground — a non-standard height for this inventory, which elsewhere measures at 130 centimetres — and calls it one of the largest of the 219 millenary olives in the municipality. It is of the Farga variety.

The age is stated only as a range and only by the bodies that put it forward. The Mancomunitat gives approximately 1,100 to 1,200 years and places the origin in the tenth century, coinciding with the Muslim period on the peninsula. AEMO's own 2024 decision is more cautious still, saying the origin coincides with the tenth century, "donde se cree que fue plantado", and that the plant was engendered "hace más de 1000 años". No dating study has been carried out or published for this tree.

What is on record in detail is the recovery. The tree stood abandoned for years. From 2019 it was brought back and returned to production under the Sénia Territory olive-recovery work driven by the Mancomunitat Taula del Sénia and the Asociación Territorio Sénia together with the town council, adapted, in the Mancomunitat's words, for agricultural, environmental, tourism, cultural and sporting uses. The owner is the Fundación Cayac–Maestrazgo, whose secretary is Cervera's mayor, Adolf Sanmartín Besalduch. During the Jornadas del Molí de l'Oli in 2021, 2022 and 2023 the programme at the town's historic mill was extended with a visit to the tree, where classical music was staged in a natural amphitheatre of straw bales, followed by a tasting for those attending.

AEMO awarded it the XVIII Premio al Mejor Olivo Monumental de España 2024. The jury was Angjelina Belaj and Francisco González of the IFAPA Alameda del Obispo in Córdoba, with José Mª Penco for AEMO acting as secretary, and its decision valued the large-diameter canopy and the trunk from which an old broken branch emerges; it stated that the prize was given because the estate's owners had recovered a tree that had been abandoned, and for the joint work of the owner, the council and the Mancomunitat from 2019. The candidacy was presented jointly by the Fundación Cayac–Maestrazgo, the Mancomunitat and the Asociación Territorio Sénia. AEMO's document spells the municipality "Cerverá del Maestre". The award was handed over at the XXII Feria del Olivo de Montoro. The FAO recorded it as the seventh AEMO prize for an olive of the Sénia Territory, which it designated a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System in 2018.

No individual protection instrument covers it. Article 4 of Valencian Law 4/2006 of 19 May grants generic protection, without individual resolution, to trees equalling or exceeding six metres of trunk circumference measured at 1.30 metres from the base; the only published perimeter for this tree was taken at 80 centimetres, so the statutory threshold cannot be checked against it.

From the public record: aemo.es · tauladelsenia.es · oliveresmillenaries.com · fao.org · interempresas.net · boe.es

Xyliatos Olive (Potima)

Potima, Xyliatos, Nicosia district, Cyprus · ~800 years attributed; described as the oldest olive in Cyprus; under Forest Department protection, 2004

The tree stands at the locality Potima, near the village of Xyliatos in the Nicosia district. Cyprus Island places it in the area of Potima and calls it the district's perennial olive tree.

The tree is described as the oldest olive tree in Cyprus. in-cyprus writes that it is 'considered to be the oldest olive tree in Cyprus, and at the same time the tree with the longest diameter', at 800 years, and Cyprus Island repeats the 800-year figure. No opened source names a person or institution behind the estimate, and no ring count or laboratory dating was found.

The measurements are where the sources part. in-cyprus records a periphery of 13 metres and a height of 6 metres, and the Centre of Visual Arts and Research in Nicosia records the same 13-metre periphery. Cyprus Island gives a height of 60 metres, which every other source contradicts and which is taken here as an error for 6 metres, and describes the tree as the largest in diameter. The Department of Forests' Tree of the Year 2012 flyer is reported to give the girth as 12.80 metres; the flyer's PDF could not be opened here, returning HTTP 400. A lower bound of 10 metres carried in this project's seed data was not found in any opened source.

The protection is dated in one source. Cyprus Island states that the tree came under the protection and maintenance of the Forest Department in 2004, after the efforts of the Community Board of Xyliatos. in-cyprus records the same sequence without a year, after 'many efforts of the Xyliatos Community Council'. The Department of Forests is quoted in the in-cyprus account as having issued a decree that such trees are 'scientifically, historically, culturally and educationally important' and 'constitute significant samples of their kinds, either because of their age or their exceptional size'. No decision number or gazette reference for the decree is given in either source.

The tree belongs to the wider Cypriot pattern described in the ancient-olive-trees-of-cyprus portrait in this file. Old olives with hollow trunks are called frankoelies or apostolitzi, and the Department of Forests protects them under ministerial order and by departmental decree. The Xyliatos tree is the one most consistently described as the island's oldest olive.

The source record is thin on method. No measuring height is given for the 13-metre girth, no condition report, no survey date and no visitor arrangements were found, and whether oil is pressed from the tree is not on record.

From the public record: web.archive.org · cyprusisland.net · en.philenews.com