Yesterday a friend of mine took us to see some olive trees in a public Olive Heratige site and agve us a little talk on the history of olives. Seeing as I live in the mediterranean, Olives play a great part in my county's diet.
Greece have a very great olive culture too, because they are also a mediterranean country. In their ancient mythology, it was athena who created the olive tree in her battle with posiedon for the possetion of a hill, which has now become Athens.
Malta also has it's own olive culture. An old author,of which we only know his surname,Borg, wrote about the 'maltese olive tree'. this olive tree has palette shaped leaves and olives which grow in bunches like grapes do. The olives are small and very oily. A particular Sammy Caruana claims that the olives in Bidnija Grove are the traditional maltese olives, because apart from having very oily olives, they have been there for over 2000 years. They have been applied for a DOC stamp (to prove that this is a Product endemic to malta). The only thing is the leaves and olive bunches do not fit borg's description.
But David Mercieqa once stumbled over an olive tree (which was not even in his grove, but in neighbouring one) which had small oily olives in bunches. At first he could not believe that that was the maltese olive tree, but when he found the lpalette leaves he was sure; ther is only one drawback; the tree is not older than 700 years old, and therefore cannot apply for a DOC stamp, because it is under 2000 years old.
What do you think? IS Sammy's Tree the Maltese olive tree, or is David's?
