The Incredible Giving Olive Tree – a pictorial guide to its many personalities, by Dilip Daya

The olive tree develops distinct characteristics and even idiosyncrasies with age. Like people, they also tend to get more hard-headed. Despite droughts, floods, urban development and other calamities, the olive trees will hang on, more often than not outliving the people who planted them.

The age rings of a felled olive tree do not have to be counted to know how it lived. Its history can be read directly upon its scarred being. The trunk will show where the wind bent it, an axe trimmed off limbs, or how a ray of lightning split it apart.

Believe it or not, there are trolls out there.

This hardy stock will grow on the steepest of inclines in the poorest of soils, living through both the scalding summers and near freezing winters.

 

Fields of Gold. Most mature olive trees exhibit distinct signs of past trauma. But it is in fact these emotional scars that give them character and make them so beautiful.

Looking at the below photograph nature gives us a new sight to behold. Just look at him to see a face with eyes, a nose and a mouth that appear on its bark. I see a lions head and mane.

This is actually a single tree with one root system that was pruned into separate trunks to allow more leaves to be exposed to sunlight. 

 But there are also signs of hope, as olive trees have a rare ability to adjust themselves to changes and virtually be reborn.

Though most olive trees prefer a regular trim, short and hairy types can often be seen in rural areas.

Macho or not, This olive tree is particularly striking. Standing tall, confident and proud!

One of the many amazing things about the Olea Europaea is its stamina. One can cut it to the ground, leaving only a dead stump. Still new branches will emerge and before one knows it, the olive tree is back producing fruit.

Split and scarred by winter cold, dried and  hollowed out by the sun, and twisted by the wind, the trunks of our olive trees reveal their histories.

While olive saplings grow straight and true, the gnarled and knotted trunks of older trees contort themselves into strange shapes, seemingly growing in every direction but straight upwards. As they age, their once silvery-smooth bark crinkles and cracks. 

The flamenco dancer with a peacocks crown.......graceful and a sight to see!

Just doing a tango!!!

An ageing olive tree can be a sculptural beauty and a musical symphony spreading its wings and beaming with joy!

This is inspired by the very twisted, strange, and beautiful remains of an olive tree. I imagined its character to be stretching and reaching, and all the limbs arching with such personality.

 

There is the inevitable siblings quarrel. Some split-ups can be painful, causing scars, or even resulting in permanent or temporary split personalities. Run, run, run!!!

Every olive tree is unique – to me each has its own personality. Above all, I love the way they resist the imposed formality of the olive grove with its terracing and neat spacing, giving the grove a pleasingly disorderly appearance.

 

In their golden years, some olive trees finally find peace, rambling in the green, or finding love at long last…

What I have lived through and the stories I can tell. With age comes wisdom and finding that inner peace!

 

 A tree does not have to be physically beautiful to be worthy. Beauty comes from within. If a person shares their life, their love, their generosity, time, and care, they will most likely be worth your time and energy. Of course, you must do the same. We all must be like the Olive Tree when it comes to our relationships.

The Giving Olive Tree