Olive trees are one of the most characteristic features of the Mediterranean. Olive plantations range from terraced fields in mountainous areas in Greece or the Balearic Islands to huge fields of many thousands of trees in southern Spain or Italy. Their cultivation goes back to the classic antique times of the Romans and Greeks and there are trees which are hundreds, sometimes even more than a thousand years old and have acquired bizarre shaped trunks by many years of pruning. However, their existence is threatened. Since 2013, a tree-killer, a bacterium called xyella fastidiosa has killed millions of olive trees in Italy and is now also traveling to Spain and Greece.
