Page:The Olive Its Culture in Theory and Practice.djvu/28

24 Group I represents the olive of the oil press, the most developed, cultured and domesticated of all olives. The fruit is of various sizes, very fleshy and oily. Sometimes, however, the olive is not very oily and then is only good for pickling. It is a large tree and above all others produces the best olives for oil.

Group II consists of middle-class olives, the tree is more rustic, the branches more robust and erect, the fruit more fleshy. Tree of middle stature.

Group III covers olives obtained from the seeds of domesticated olives; the most rustic of cultivated trees. Its branches are robust and erect, its fruit of various sizes but not very fleshy. A tree generally not growing very large but sometimes of rather good appearance.

Group IV represents the savage type which is not worth cultivating because the fruit is small and the stone is large, with little or no pulp. It grows to a bush or small tree of from ten to sixteen feet in height.

This is the variety mainly cultivated in the provinces of Lucca and Pisa, regions that have a world-wide reputation for their oil and where, also, are found in less numbers the Mignolo, Morajolo, Puntarolo and some Grossajo. The twigs of the Razzo are short, light, numerous and rather reflexed. (See Plate III.) It is cultivated in groves on the Pisan mountains where, however, the trees are too near together and as a result they grow too high. It will not bear much pruning; all that is necessary is to keep it freed from the dead twigs, from shoots that are too high and from branches