ABSTRACT
It is still the case that many people in north-western Europe rarely encounter the olive outside the context of cocktail parties or pizza toppings, while the words ‘olive oil’ may call to mind first and foremost the eponymous girlfriend of Popeye. By and large we are still olive green and oil ignorant, geographically divorced as we are from the chief area of cultivation of the olive. Of the approximately 800 million olive trees worldwide, 98 per cent are located in the Mediterranean lands (De Beir 1980, 311-12). There the olive is perhaps a little too well known, to the extent that it is sometimes taken for granted.
