OLIVE TREE. 
95 
A week after the expanding of the flower the corolla fades and falls. If 
the calyx remains behind, a favorable presage is formed of the fruitfulness 
of the season : but the hopes of the husbandman are liable to be blasted 
at this period by the slightest intemperateness of the elements, which 
causes the germ to fall with the flower. Warm weather, accompanied by 
gentle breezes that agitate the tree and facilitate the fecundation, is the 
most favourable to his hopes. 
The fruit of the Olive is called by botanists a drupe : it is composed of 
pulpy matter enveloping a stone, or ligneous shell containing a kernel. 
The olive, is ovate, pointed at the extremity, from 6 to 10 lines in diame- 
ter in one direction, and from 10 to 15 lines in the other : on the wild 
it hardly exceeds the size of the red currant. The skin is smooth, and, 
when ripe, of a violet color; but in certain varieties it is yellowish 
or red. The pulp is greenish, and the stone is oblong, pointed and divi- 
ded into two cells, one of which is usually void. The oil of the olive is 
furnished by the pulp, which is a characteristic almost peculiar to this 
fruit ; in other oleaginous vegetables it is extracted from the seed. The 
young olive sets in June, increases in size and remains green through the 
summer, begins to change color early in October, “and is ripe at the end of 
November or in the beginning of December. On the Wild Olive 5 or 6 
drupes are ripened upon each peduncle ; but on the cultivated tree a great 
part of the flowers are abortive, and the green fruit is cast at every stage 
of its growth, so that rarely more than one or two germs upon a cluster 
arrive at maturity. 
It has been observed from early antiquity that the produce of the Olive 
is alternate ; and in France it is proverbially said to labor one year for 
itself and one year for its owner. The cause of this phenomenon will be 
mentioned hereafter. It is asserted that the Wild Olives are sometimes 
barren ; but these must be trees that have sprung from stones dropped upon 
arid rocks, in whose crevices the roots barely find nourishment enough to 
sustain the abject existence of the plant. 
On the branches of the Olive, and on the trunk of the young tree, the 
bark is smooth and of an ashy hue. When the epidermis is removed, the 
cellular tissue appears of a light green. On old trees the bark upon the 
trunk and upon the base of the principal limbs is brown, rough and deeply 
furrowed. In the spring and autumn, when the sap is in motion, the bark 
is easily detached from the body of the tree. 
The wood is heavy, compact, fine-grained and brilliant. The alburnum 
is white and soft, and the perfect wood is hard, brittle and of a reddish 
tint, with the pith nearly effaced as in the Box. It is employed by cabinet 
makers to inlay the finer species of wood which are contrasted with it in 
color, and to form light, ornamental articles, such as dressing cases, tobac- 
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