Sooner or later about 3,000 years in the past, at a time when the Minoan civilization nonetheless dominated over Crete and lengthy earlier than the rise of Classical Greece, an olive fell to the bottom within the space of Vouves. Or maybe it was intentionally planted there by a human hand.
Whichever the case, that olive seed sprouted and grew right into a tree. And extremely that tree remains to be alive immediately – and nonetheless producing fruit – one of many so-called ‘monumental olive trees’ of Crete.
The Olive tree of Vouves is an olive tree within the village of Ano Vouves within the municipal unit of Kolymvari in Chania regional unit, Crete, Greece. In all probability one of many oldest olive bushes on the planet, it nonetheless produces olives immediately.
The precise age of the tree can’t be decided. Using radioisotopes isn’t attainable, as its heartwood has been misplaced down the centuries, whereas tree ring evaluation demonstrated the tree to be no less than 2,000 years previous.
And on the opposite finish of the dimensions, scientists from the College of Crete have estimated it to be 4,000 years previous. A attainable indicator of its age are the 2 cemeteries from the Geometric Interval found close to the tree.
Present analysis in Crete and overseas signifies that earlier estimates of the age of olive bushes are to be debated so far as their accuracy. There may be not but an agreed-upon scientific technique to establish the age of olive bushes.
Within the case of the Vouves Olive, it may very well be a lot youthful than earlier estimates and even than the traditional tree in Finix (Sfakia).
In 2012, the Municipality of Platanias and Terra Creta organized for the primary time a harvesting occasion the place 55 kg of olives has been collected and 5.0 kg of olive oil was produced in a specifically designed olive mill.
In 1997, the tree was declared a protected pure monument, and in October 2009, the Olive Tree Museum of Vouves was inaugurated in a close-by Nineteenth-century home, displaying the normal instruments and strategy of olive cultivation.
Branches from the tree had been used to weave victors’ wreaths for the winners of the 2004 Athens Olympics and the 2008 Beijing Olympics. A terrestrial laser scanner ILRIS 3D for the exterior and a Minolta Vivid 910 for inner scans had been used.
The ultimate produced result’s an entire three-dimensional mannequin of the trunk of the Monumental Olive Tree of Vouves with a geometry accuracy of 0.5 cm. 1000’s of vacationers go to the beautiful tree each summer season to marvel at it and study its historical past.
Largely they’re impressed by its huge form and the imposing quantity of the trunk, but in addition by the truth that it stays alive and fruitful for 3,000 years with out pause.
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