The olive tree flower

The olive tree flower

16-11-2018

The olive tree flower
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The rapa (olive blossom) is surprisingly discreet and striking at the same time. Unobtrusive because very few people notice it, usually we look at the fruit. But it is at the same time eye-catching, because at its peak, the rapa bunches are beautiful and cover the base of the olive tree like snow.

An interesting fact about the rapa is that the pollen grains from its flowers travel hundreds of kilometres, even as far as Morocco. It is surprising that olive trees in Andalusia pollinate olive trees in Morocco and vice versa. This favours diversity and facilitates adaptation to the environment thanks to genetic crossbreeding, which is why there are so many different olive varieties.

The olive tree flowers in April and May. Depending on the temperature it will flower earlier or later. After a few weeks of flowering, under the olive trees there is a white layer of flowers because a high percentage of the flowers fall off. Only 2% of the flowers are pollinated. On that 2%, the tree makes a ''sieve``, selection and discards some of the new fruits, leaving only the fruits that the tree is able to feed, in order to ensure the proper growth of those fruits.
Finally, the flowering phase of the olive trees is very short, the blossom does not last more than a week. However, it is exciting to see the rapa falling from the tree as if it were snow, covering the old trunk in white.

A very interesting phenomenon that occurs is that of cross-pollination. Cross-pollination occurs when one variety of flower is pollinated by a different variety. Thus, for example, cross-pollination of hojiblanca and picual can occur. This happens in our centenary olive grove, where our Coupage Natural comes from. As three different olive varieties (picual, picudo and hojiblanca) have been planted together, the olives are neither 100% hojiblanca nor 100% picudo, but a mixture of the three varieties. This cross-pollination is partly responsible for the incredible nuances of our Coupage Natural and makes it a very difficult to reproduce EVOO.