12 trees, told properly

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

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

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

Olive of Azorias (Kavousi)

Kavousi, Ierapetra, Lasithi, Crete, Greece · trunk perimeter 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

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 perimeter 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 perimeter 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 · oliveresmilenaries.com · 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 perimeter 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 perimeter 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 perimeter 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 perimeter 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 perimeter 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 perimeter 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 perimeter 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 perimeter 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 · oliveresmilenaries.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 perimeter 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 perimeter 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