Fruit
Olea europaea
S tier
Olea europaea is the cultivated olive tree of the Mediterranean—evergreen, long-lived, and grown for oil-rich drupes and table fruit depending on cultivar chemistry and processing. Fruit must be cured or pressed; raw olives are intensely bitter from oleuropein. Wild oleasters and ancient orchard landscapes frame the species’ cultural weight from Iberia to the Levant and beyond. All named table and oil cultivars—Kalamata, Arbequina, Picual, and the rest—sit under this species. Climate, harvest timing, and mill practice shape flavour as much as genetics. Wood, leaf, and fruit each have uses, but kitchens meet O. europaea primarily as oil, cured fruit, and tapenade pastes.
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Characteristics
Preparations
Traits
History
Early olive domestication took shape in the eastern Mediterranean and Near East.
Greek and Phoenician expansion spread cultivated olives across Mediterranean shores.
Colonial plantings carried Olea europaea to the Americas, Australia, and southern Africa.
Industrial milling and canning globalised olive oil and table olive trade.