94 
OLIVE TREE. 
Indeed the Olive possesses neither the majesty of forest-trees, nor the 
gracefulness of shrubbery. It clothes the hills without adorning them, 
and, considered as an accident of the landscape it does not charge the pic- 
ture sufficiently to contribute greatly to its beauty. The rich culture for 
which the southern provinces of France are celebrated is less conducive 
to rural beauty than some of the humbler species of husbandry. The 
richest country is not always the most lovely; a country of mines, for 
example, is usually ungracious to the eye, and the Olive is called by an 
Italian writer, a mine upon the surface of the earth. 
This tree is remarkable for its longevity : the ancients limited its existence 
to two hundred years, but modern authors assert that, in climates suited to 
its constitution, it survives its fifth century. Relations are made of the 
bulk of some of these patriarchal trees, too surprising to be repeated unless 
they were perfectly authenticated ; but in France there are Olive trees 
which two men can hardly compass in their arms. 
The main limbs of the Olive are numerously divided : the branches are 
opposite, and the pairs are alternately placed upon conjugate axes of the 
limb. The foliage is ever-green, but a part of it turns yellow and falls in 
the summer, and in three years it is completely renewed. In the spring 
or early autumn, the seasons when vegetation is in its greatest activity, the 
young leaves come out immediately above the cicatrix of the former peti- 
oles, and are distinguished by their suppleness and by the freshness of 
their tint. 
The color of the leaves varies in the different varieties of the Olive, but 
they are generally smooth and of a light green above, whitish and some- 
what downy with a prominent rib beneath. On most of the cultivated 
varieties they are from 15 lines to 2 inches long, and from 6 to 12 lines 
broad, lanceolate, entire, nearly sessile, opposite and alternate in the'man- 
ner of the branches. 
The Olive is slow in blooming as well as in every function of vegetable 
life. The buds begin to appear about the middle of April, and the bloom 
is not full before the end of May or the beginning of June. The flowers 
are small, white, slightly odoriferous, and disposed in axillary racemes or 
clusters. A peduncle about as long as the leaf issues from its base, upon 
wdiich the flowers are supported by secondary pedicles like those of the 
Common Currant. Sometimes the clusters are almost as numerous as the 
leaves, and garnish the tree with wanton luxuriance ; at others, they are 
thinly 'scattered, over the. branches, or seen only at their extremity. It is 
essential to remark that they are borne by the shoots of the preceding 
year. Each flower is complete in itself, consisting of a calyx, a monope- 
talous corolla divided into four lobes, and of the. organs of reproduction, 
namely, two stamina and one pistil. 
