Olea europaea

The European olive tree is a small evergreen tree in the family Oleaceae, found around the Mediterranean to southern Asia and eastward to China and growing to be over 2,000 years old in various Middle East locations.

It has been cultivated for olives for over 5,000 years and has been bred to produce hundreds of different cultivars. The tree's fruit, the olive, is of major agricultural importance in the Mediterranean region for producing olive oil and pickled olives.

• Leaves are opposite, simple, evergreen, lanceolate or narrow oblong, silvery green above and more pale below, 4–10 cm long and 1–3 cm across.
• Flowers are small, creamy white, feathery in clusters at leaf axils in spring.
• Fruit is an oblong long, smooth drupe 1–2 cm long with 1 pit inside (although there are varieties without pits), beginning green and maturing to purple.
• Most olives are processed for their oils, with only 10% of them being used as table olives. These are picked in 3 stages of ripeness for use green, semi-ripe or black (fully mature). They are often cured and fermented before eating, but a few varieties can be eaten fresh.