As I mentioned in the last blog, we were out last weekend getting to know the wider area round our Abruzzo rental villas. The warmth maybe not doing much for prospects of skiing in the Gran Sasso, but great for strolling through the olive groves and vineyards - where we came across a real horticultural puzzle we'd like your help solving.

Yellow berries ?
Take a look at the picture. It's an oak tree - one of hundreds that grow in this area of Chieti province. Now look again. Yes - yellow berries ! Where do they come from ? I'm a reasonably clued-up gardener, but this was something new to me.

First thought was that this was a type of mistletoe. This regularly grows on oak trees back in England. (And yes, this really was an oak - a scattering of unmistakable dead leaves still on and around the tree were proof enough of that). But mistletoe has white berries - and it's evergreen. (And surely mistletoe would wither in the heat of a Chieti province summer.) This mystery plant hadn't got a leaf in sight - yet it was clearly growing on the oak. And oaks have acorns - not lots of little yellow berries !

One other clue. The birds, driven down off the Gran Sasso by the winter snow,  have by now stripped pretty much every available edible fruit and berry off other trees and bushes. But as you can see, this profusion of yellow berries seems pretty much untouched. Are they poisonous ? We're baffled - and very curious. If you can successfully solve the mystery, there'll be a bottle of excellent prosecco waiting for you as a prize when you come to stay at our Abruzzo villa rental !

The photogenic olive
And I had to share this picture with you. The only mystery here is how old this olive tree might be. It's a common olive-growing technique, certainly around here and probably everywhere else that olives are grown, to split the trunk of a young tree so that - in effect - two trees are formed and yields are increased.

This ancient example, sitting quietly deep in one of the many olive groves surrounding our Abruzzo rental villas, has been split and divided over the years to the point where the base is a good ten feet wide and one original tree has almost become a small copse !

Old olive trees - which produce the best fruit (and the best oil) - can be sold for upwards of €500. They're simply scooped-up by a digger, stuck on a tractor, moved and replanted. All without missing a beat.

(Click on pictures in text for larger images) 

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 7th, 2008 at 5:20 pm and is filed under About Abruzzo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.