The olive is an evergreen tree about 20 to 30 feet high, much branched
and spreading. It forms a symmetrical head, having angular branches and
opposite leaves. The leaves are dry and leathery in texture, lanceolate,
entire, deep green above, and light hoary beneath. The flowers are
small, star-shaped, creamy white with yellow centers, have a faint
pleasing odor, and are axillary in compact racemes. The fruit, a fleshy
pendulous drupe, is very abundant. It is oval, obovate, or globular in
shape, about the size of a pigeon’s egg, dull greenish yellow even when
full size but unripe, then gradually becomes yellow, red, and finally
turns a glossy purplish black or black when ripe. In ripening, the side
exposed to the sun reddens, then gradually the whole fruit changes from
red to purple, then black. As fruit of all degrees of ripeness are
developed at the same time, the tree furnishes an extremely beautiful
combination of colors, the various greens of the leaf and fruits forming
a background for the splotches of red, purple, and black formed by the
ripening fruit. The fruit is peculiar in two respects, first, in that it
contains in addition to the ordinary constituents of fruits an abundance
of edible oil, consequently making it a valuable food; second in that it
contains a bitter substance which does not disappear on maturity, so
that the fruit cannot be eaten at any stage in its development without
preliminary treatment for the elimination of this substance. The stone
is two-celled, many times only one seed developing.