Millenary olive trees are characterized by exceeding 4 meters of perimeter in the trunk that each perimeter grows every 200 years, is also characterized by reaching 2 to 4 meters in height and for more than 200 years.
To know the age of an olive it is necessary to make a cut in a section of the trunk that has the internal part of the wood that the concentric rings of growth that represent the annual numbers or phases of growth that they have, the clearer the ring is the tree is the youngest.
Measure the age of an olive tree
However, in the case of olive trees it is difficult to calculate the ages because there are no rings inside and are usually hollow, but there is a way to calculate their age thanks to a mathematical model where age relates to the variables of the trunk, such as diameter, perimeter and radius.
The technique to calculate the age of an olive millennium with the trunk variables such as diameter, perimeter and radius, is carried out in the following way:
As a first step, a model of average growth of the olive trees should be elaborated, that is, a study of the evolution of the perimeter, diameter or average radius of a set of olive trees in relation to their age is made.
Important facts
As a next step, to know the age of an olive tree, you must have a ready-made model and you must give the date of another thousand year old olive tree of the same region based on the dimensional characteristics.
A very important fact is that the oldest olive tree that has an approximate age of 2.84 years, is estimated to have an age that has a perimeter at the base of more than 9 meters. This specimen is located in the urban center of Santa Iria de Azóia, north of Lisbon.
