From the Archive: Olive Trees in Florida? (2007)

Back in 2007, a small tree farm in Citra was growing thousands of olive trees in… Florida. An unlikely place for an olive — and a good lesson in where this tree will, and won’t, happily grow.

What was reported

The Olive Branch Tree Farm in Citra, Florida, run by Tony and Shirley Valenza, was growing and selling olive trees, olives and oil — with more than 3,000 trees in stock — pitching the olive as an unusual, attractive addition to a Florida landscape.

What I make of it now

The romance is lovely; the horticulture is harder. The olive is famously tough on drought, heat and poor soil — but Florida throws it two things it genuinely dislikes: high humidity (which encourages fungal disease) and, in much of the state, not enough winter chill for the trees to fruit well. Olives can be grown as handsome ornamentals across the Deep South, and a few growers coax fruit from them — but Florida has never become a serious oil region, and the honest reason is climate, not effort. It’s a useful counterpoint to the “olives grow everywhere now” story: they grow in far more places than the Mediterranean — but not anywhere. The tree has preferences, and humidity isn’t one.

Originally reported April 2007 (Kathy Edenhofer, on the Olive Branch Tree Farm, Citra, Florida). The original article is no longer online.