Sisters Olive Trees of Noah

The Sisters or The Sisters Olive Trees of Noah are a grove of sixteen olive trees in the Lebanese town of Bcheale.[1]

Sign given to the village by the Ministry of Tourism after the trees' possible age was publicized in 1999

According to local folklore, the trees are at least 5,000 years old, perhaps even 6,000 years old or older.[2][3] If this is correct, they may be the oldest non-clonal living trees in the world, as the oldest definitely-established age for a living tree is 5,064 years (as of 2014) for a Great Basin Bristlecone Pine in California.[4] The age of any of The Sisters has not been determined by dendrochronology (tree-ring dating) and possibly cannot be due to deterioration of the inner tree ring structures over time.

Folk legend also ascribes The Sisters as the source of the olive branch returned to Noah's Ark at the waning of the Biblical Flood.[5][6] The trees still produce olives, and a preservation effort was undertaken by the non-profit organization Sisters Olive Oil, which marketed oil from these olives.[6]

References
  1. Linda Pappagallo (January 8, 2013). "The World's Oldest Living Olive Trees Are Lebanese". Green Prophet. Retrieved April 28, 2013.
  2. Ingo Helbig (February 14, 2013). "Rare variants and olive trees". Beyond the Ion Channel. EuroEPINOMICS. Retrieved April 28, 2013.
  3. Carol Drinkwater (2011). The Olive Tree. Orion. pp. 18–. ISBN 978-0-297-85750-1. Retrieved 8 September 2012.
  4. Peter M. Brown (January 2013). "Oldlist". Rocky Mountain Tree-Ring Research. Retrieved April 28, 2013.
  5. Dima Sharif. "Olive Oil Ice Cream & The Ultra Premium EV Olive Oil Harvested From The Oldest Living Olive Trees On Earth". Dima Sharif, Bringing Food to Life. Retrieved April 28, 2013.
  6. T.K. Maloy (October 31, 2012). "Bechealeh's ancient trees still producing high-end olive oil". The Daily Star (Lebanon). Retrieved April 28, 2013.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.