<table border=0 cellpadding=2 cellspacing="0"><tr><td>
<pre>I would like to know whether anyone on this list has any experience
with curing or pressing any variety of wild olive. I am especially
interested in the African wild olive, Olea africana. The reason for my
interest is that I do research among a group of people in Kenya who
live in and around a forest that contains a lot of wild olive trees,
and I am curious as to whether there is any chance that they could use
their trees to make some money by either pressing or curing the wild
olives.

Thank you for your help,

Lee Cronk
leecronk@yahoo.com

__________________________________________________ ___________
Do You Yahoo!?
Free instant messaging and more at http://messenger.yahoo.com
</pre>
</td></tr></table>

<table border=0 cellpadding=2 cellspacing="0"><tr><td>
<pre>Lee, for what it is worth. When my friend and myself first took an interest
in olives - 1997 - we were keen to find as much about it as possible.
Because the olive industry in Australia is a new/old industry there wasn't
all that much information publicly available. The Internet has changed this
in a profound way and as we are all finding out on this discussion group we
have a lot to learn from each other. Australia is in a "new industry" phase
in regard to olives - it has become fashionable!
But there are others (Craig Hill in Adelaide, South Australia) who will be
able to tell you the real olives story in Australia and it goes back to the
first settlers bringing plants out from the Med on their sea passage to
Australia.

Thinking that there was no record of olive growing in our area (Bega Valley
on the East Coast of Australia and fairly close to the Victorian border) we
probed through an article in our local newspaper. Immediately we got
results and ironically we were informed that we drive past a stand of ten
olive trees everyday. They were planted around 1850 1860 and of course we
never noticed them. Another farm close by has one superb colonial tree which
stands 35 foot tall. These trees have never been pruned, watered, picked or
looked after in any way, so you could almost put them in the 'wild'
category. We sent cuttings and fruit from these trees to Adelaide University
for DNA testing and oil content analysis. The oil content was high and the
fatty acid results were quite good.

So to answer your question - your wild olives could certainly be harvested
and pressed. I am sure if you could get them DNA tested you would know
whether they were table olive varieties or oil varieties.

Regards

Phil Bramley
</pre>
</td></tr></table>

<table border=0 cellpadding=2 cellspacing="0"><tr><td>
<pre>It is most interesting that olives have gone wild in the Adelaide Hills.
Strictly speaking they should not be called wild as they are in fact
cultivated olives that have escaped. Australia does not have a real wild
olive population. What is strange is that they are so competitive with the
existing Australian vegetation.

Here in Italy it is general agreed that olives are introduced - some
thousands of years ago - but they do not go wild. When we took over our
olive grove it had be abandoned for many years and the olives were overgrown
with blackberries and old man's beard. The sort of plants you would find in
the Adelaide Hills. There were no self sown olives. Why? Either climate or
animals.

The climate is certainly colder. It is currently -4C outside and I hope
it does not get any colder or we will have serious damage to our trees. Does
this kill off seedlings?

Animals such as the wild boar and the porcupine certainly eat most of
the olives that fall on the ground (and some that don't from the lower
branches) but the stones would pass through and some would escape so that is
not a satisfactory reason.

Cheers Brian Chatterton.
</pre>
</td></tr></table>

<table border=0 cellpadding=2 cellspacing="0"><tr><td>
<pre>While it is claimed that the "wild" or "feral" olives around South
Australia are the result of birds dropping seeds and foxes doing the
same, in fact many of these trees were planted by land holders to serve
as wind breaks. While there are certainly feral olives around, many are
as a result of mans activities.
It is possible that much of the concern about feral olives is misplaced.
In fact in South Australia the olive is proclaimed as a noxious weed and
in order to set up an olive orchard one has to obtain permission from
the council to do so. The councils in turn have to liase with State and
federal bodies to obtain their input to the application.
Andrew & Val Brown
</pre>
</td></tr></table>

<table border=0 cellpadding=2 cellspacing="0"><tr><td>
<pre>The wild or feral olives in the Adelaide Hills are remarkable, they seem
to favour only a certain type of terrain. To the best of my knowledge
they dont grow west of Mt Lofty but are thick around Mt Barker. My hunch
is that the soil is very different between the two areas with a big jump
in pH & lime being the determinating factor. Many of the greeks use the
seedlings to graft onto, you go up into the hills all day and dig them
out, grow them on in a pot then graft the next season. In parts of
greece (so they tell me) eg Samos & Ios they have the wild olives in the
hills, grandfather gets the young ones to dig out the seedlings. In this
way the culture is passed on. One fellow from Ios spent some time
showing me how to differentiate between certain buds for grafting, to me
it was lost whereas to them it was second nature. Samos experienced big
fires summer of 2000 which burnt out much of the wild stock and groves;
they say that they wont replant due to lack of willing youngsters. In
the adelaide hills I've noticed that some trees seem to have many
seedlings around their skirts and others none. Also they say that some
trees have good oil olives and others give none. Natural selection at
work, if someone could find the 'super cv' & PBR it (I think they are
already looking under the guise of academic R&D) they could be well
positioned for propagation. If you go to the hills around July/August
there are people furtively scurrying around with bags along the
roadsides picking ferals for oil.

Roger Farquhar

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
</pre>
</td></tr></table>

<table border=0 cellpadding=2 cellspacing="0"><tr><td>
<pre>Andrew,
re "feral" olive problems. Nice note you sent.
I presume that you are aware of the little bit of research we at HVO have
done on feral olive movement? If not you may be interested in coming in and
looking at the poster one day. I think the "Olive Press" ran an article on
it also. Basically, we (Dr. Graham Collins et al - not me!) looked at a
remote group of olives on KI and found that they did NOT move around as we
would have expected from bird dropping of seed (maybe). 'Maybe' since we
are not sure what result we might get elsewhere due to the nature of the
experimental setup. eg the local birds may not eat those olives for some
reason - however I think they were Frantoio stock. 'Maybe' for lots of
similar nit picking reasons that we cannot defend yet.

Anyway, if you are interested then come and have a look at our setup. Ring
me on 83036652 9 to about 6 else at home 83449161 'till 10pm. I could mail
you a copy of the paper and article.

Bob Barrett, Lecturer Olive Production & Marketing, Waite campus, Plant
Research Centre.

At 08:28 AM 18/12/01 +1030, you wrote:
>While it is claimed that the "wild" or "feral" olives around South
>Australia are the result of birds dropping seeds and foxes doing the
>
</pre>
</td></tr></table>