Olive Trees

Olea europaea on the island in Regan Hall Circle.

Olive trees (Olea europaea) grow all around Davis. Most people are familiar with the green or black pickled fruit, and often don't recognize olives out of the can. In Davis, olive trees can be found growing along Olive Drive and Russell Blvd, where they stain the ground black in the Autumn. There's also a big olive tree right in front of City Hall.

The fruit needs a long period of heat to ripen, making Davis a perfect habitat. Olives are bitter in their natural state, and are only edible after a long treatment process (often involving lye) that removes the natural alkaloids. University of California Agricultural Sciences Publications Leaflet 21131, The ABC's of Home-Cured Green Ripe Olives, details the process. The trees can reach up to 50 feet in height. Olive trees' foliage is narrow, pointy, and grayish-green.

UC Davis actually harvests a lot of the olives that drop from these trees, bottles it up, and sells high quality olive oil! You can also buy quite good, reasonably local, olive oil at the Farmers Market.

For info on other local plants see Town Flora.