When I moved to Southern California, I was intrigued by the many olive trees I saw growing, some of them fairly old, though not nearly as old as olive trees in the middle East and mediterranean. The trees tended to be fairly short, because they were pruned, but the trunks were gnarly and twisted, and the leaves were a lovely silver-green. I didn't realize that olives had to be cured before they were eaten (I thought they looked odd because they were wild), so I picked and tried one.

It was horrible; it was so bitter that I halfway expected to find my tongue and lips had shriveled. That bitterness is caused by oleuropein, a natural antioxidant. Olives are usually either fermented, processed with lye or bleach or washed repeatedly and brined before consumption, largely in order to control the bitterness of the oleuropein. It's not toxic, or even harmful; in fact oleuropein is one of the reasons olives, once processed and eaten or pressed to produce olive oil, are not only tasty, but exceedingly healthy.

The olive tree has been cultivated for thousands of years for its fruit, olive oil made by pressing the fruit, its leaves, and the use of the tree's wood in furniture and household objects. Olives are naturally high in iron and vitamin E, as well as good sources of fiber and copper, and monounsaturated fats. They are also rich with polyphenols and flavonoids, both of which have positive anti-inflammatory effects. There are still-bearing ancient olive trees, trees that are over a thousand years old.

There are hundreds, possibly thousands, of olive strains, but all of them are members of the Olea europaea species, members of the Oleaceae family, a very large family of relatively small trees common all over the mediterranean and middle east. The Oleacea family includes Lilacs, Jasmine, and Forsythia, among others. The olive itself has been a central part of diets in the mediterranean, the Middle East and Southern Europe, where they have been carefully cultivated and tended for thousands of years. In fact, there are some olive trees that are thousands of years in modern Israel and Yemen. Olives are grown commercially all over the world, even in Australia and the U. S. now, especially in California, though Greece dominates the world in terms of olives, and olive oil production. Olives can and do thrive in the Pacific Northwest. Recently, I've started to hear about small quantities of olives and olive oil from Pender Island, Washington being sold as gourmet specialty products.

The proper time to harvest olives (generally accomplished by gently shaking the tree when the olives are ripe) depends on the particular species and the location. In the Northern hemisphere, olives are harvested in the fall; in Southern Europe and the Mediterranean, harvest is a month or two later. Some olives are harvested while they are still green; others are allowed ripen fully until they are very dark, almost black (not to be confused with olives whose post-harvest processing by lye or other treatments darkens them to a deep black). If you have a ready source of fresh olives, you can always process your own olives, or pickle them yourself.

Image credit: Thomas Hawk