The Olive Tree of Azoria (Kavousi)

Somebody grafted this tree in the Bronze Age and it is still carrying the join. The crown you look at is a mouratoelia, a local eating cultivar, growing on a wild olive rootstock underneath, and Greek and international sources describe it as the oldest known example of olive grafting anywhere in the world. That claim is repeated everywhere and traced to no single paper, so take it as the consensus rather than a citation. The age is firmer than that, and firmer than Crete's more famous olive in the west. Ring analysis reported by the municipality of Ierapetra dates the planting to between 1350 and 1100 BCE, putting the tree somewhere around 3,000 to 3,400 years old, and the press has settled on about 3,250. One method, one range, and the sources agree with each other, which is not something the olive at Vouves can offer. It stands about a kilometre south of Kavousi on the road toward Avgos, beside the excavated settlement of Azoria that gives it its name, signposted from the eastern entrance of the village as the old olive. The trunk runs 14.2 metres around and 4.9 metres across. It still bears fruit. Branches from it made the winner's wreath for the women's marathon at the Athens Olympics in 2004, and Greece has declared it a protected monument of nature.