When Rafael Fontán Barreiro, a classical culture professor and author of La almazara de Catón. Olivos y aceite en Grecia y Roma, is asked whether an olive tree can be grown from a pit, his answer is simple but surprising: “If you plant an olive pit, you won’t get an olive tree. You’ll get an acebuche.” The acebuche is the wild olive, part of the same broader species complex as cultivated olives, and traditionally associated with smaller fruit and different growth characteristics.
Fontán shared this understanding in an interview with La Vanguardia, challenging a widespread misconception. A pit can germinate into an olive seedling, but it will not reliably reproduce the named variety or its fruit and oil characteristics. The difference is genetic: seeds form through sexual reproduction, combining parental genes, while cuttings and grafts preserve the selected cultivar. The International Olive Council says olive varieties are multiplied through vegetative reproduction. Its seed collections, by contrast, represent the genetic diversity of cultivated olives.
The Science Behind the Acebuche
Information from Fontán, the process comes down to genetics. An olive seed carries a new combination of inherited traits, rather than a clone of the fruit-bearing tree. A seedling may grow into an olive plant, but its fruit size, oil yield, harvest timing, disease resistance and growth habit can differ from those of its parent. So it is more precise to say that planting a pit will not produce the same cultivated variety than to assume every seedling simply “returns” to a wild form.
The domestication of the olive began around 8,000 years ago, as ancient farmers selected desirable specimens and propagated them. Historical and genetic accounts place early domestication in the eastern Mediterranean, followed by the westward spread of cultivation. Over time, cultivated olives also mixed with genetically diverse wild populations, adding to the variation among modern trees. The Phoenicians later brought cultivated olive material to the Iberian Peninsula, trading it for tin in Tartessos.
To grow a tree true to a named variety, Fontán explains, growers must use cuttings or grafts from existing cultivated olives. Vegetative propagation preserves the selected tree’s genetic identity; grafting can also attach a chosen variety’s fruiting wood to an established rootstock. Commercial orchards rely on identified planting material when uniform fruit or oil production matters. “Every olive tree is 7,000 years old,” Fontán notes, pointing to the long history of selection and propagation behind today’s groves.
How to Grow Olives Successfully
Fontán also offers practical advice drawn from classical sources. Olive trees thrive in porous soils with little clay and good drainage, since waterlogged roots can be fatal. Ancient treatises recommended spacing trees about nine meters apart. That spacing let groves resemble shaded woodlands instead of the tightly pruned plantations common today.
Pruning, Fontán observes, has grown more aggressive over time to boost fruit production. In antiquity, trees were allowed to grow more naturally. The ideal climate for olives is mild, and ancient texts place groves at low elevations near the coast. Modern techniques have expanded the olive’s range, but these traditional guidelines still inform successful cultivation.
Olives in Mediterranean Culture
In La almazara de Catón, published by Godall Edicions, Fontán explores the olive’s role in Greek and Roman agriculture through the writings of Theophrastus, Virgil, Pliny the Elder, Cato, Columella and Palladius. The book describes olive oil as a cornerstone of the Mediterranean diet, alongside wheat and wine, and pays tribute to the generations of farmers who have sustained this legacy.
The history of olive domestication echoes other efforts to preserve agricultural heritage. In Palencia, for example, a recent project revived a lost Spanish tomato variety from century-old seeds, showing the value of genetic diversity and traditional knowledge. Read more in this report on the revival of historic Spanish tomatoes.
Fontán’s work shows how the olive tree, central to Mediterranean identity, reflects nature and generations of human care and selection. Each cultivated variety carries a history of propagation. A pit offers something different: a genetically distinct seedling and the chance to add another chapter to the olive’s story.
