.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
You can pick out a Wild Olive from a distance by the colour. The leaves are grey-green above and silver-gold underneath, so the whole canopy shifts shade whenever the wind moves through it. The crown is dense and rounded. Old trunks are gnarled and deeply fluted, and a tree that has been standing for two or three centuries looks it.
Small cream flowers come out in spring, easy to miss but sweetly scented. The fruit is a thin-fleshed purple-black olive, far too bitter for us. Birds have no such objection. African olive pigeons and Cape parrots will travel a long way for a good crop, and starlings, barbets, mousebirds and bulbuls strip what's left.
It is the wild relative of the commercial olive, and close enough that growers graft one onto the other. The wood is among the hardest and heaviest in the country, dark and beautifully grained, and was worked into furniture, carvings, tool handles and wagon yokes. Leaf infusions have long been used for sore throats and eye complaints, and the leaves have been brewed as a tea for generations.
You'll find Wild Olives at old homesteads, in graveyards and beside kraal walls all over South Africa — planted for shade, or left standing when everything around them was cleared.
Ensure full sun and adequate drainage, then very little from you. Water through the first two summers to get the roots down and it will manage on its own after that — one of the best trees available for a low-water garden.
It takes pruning well, so it works as a hedge, a screen or a clipped specimen, and it's a long-standing favourite for bonsai. The roots aren't aggressive, so you can plant it near paving and walls. Good on a slope for holding soil, good as a windbreak, and slow enough that it won't take over a medium-sized garden.
We plant Wild Olive at both Uilenkraal and Mistbelt for its sheer resilience, few species can match its tolerance for frost, drought, and poor soil, making it a dependable choice even on the most exposed or degraded parts of each site. It's a slower-growing, long-lived addition to the forest rather than a quick pioneer, but one that will still be standing centuries from now, with wild specimens elsewhere in South Africa estimated at over 300 years old. Its fruit also draws olive pigeons, Cape parrots, and other forest birds, adding lasting wildlife value to the site long after the initial planting.
A Tree Card funds real tree planting in one of Greenpop's restoration projects. Browse our full range of designs, for any occasion, and find the right one for you.
