The rest of the olive tree

Winter is a period of rest for everyone,
even for plants. 

In winter plants reduce their physiological functions to a minimum: they slow down and wait patiently for the cold period to end in order to be reborn in spring. Even the olive tree, one of the most widespread crops in the Tuscan countryside, experiences this “vegetative rest”. Human life can only be linked to the changing of the seasons and to the cycles of nature: in the case of the olive tree, this period of rest becomes the best period for its pruning.

 

The period of pruning of this plant also corresponds to that of Easter. The olive branches play a central role on Palm Sunday. It is the Sunday before Easter, the day on which Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is celebrated, welcomed by a cheering crowd waving palm branches. In Italy, as palm trees are not very common, olive trees have been used. When the countryside was still linked to the city, people brought freshly pruned olive branches to Mass to be blessed and then taken home. The branches were normally hung together with the crucifix or the image of the Virgin Mary and thus preserved until Easter the following year. The branches had been blessed and therefore were in effect sacred objects: for this reason they could not be thrown but only burned or buried. All this is still done today in many families.

 

Nature, man, crops, religion…everything is intertwined in the knowledge of a territory.