Olive Trees in Florida — a Brief History

02/21/2010

by Cary Cloud
In newspaper articles and on websites, several individuals claim to have recently introduced olive trees to Florida. The recorded fact is that the first olive trees in Florida were planted at New Smyrna in 1770, just one year after the first olive plantings in California were made at Mission San Diego.
The website turnbullclan.com states, "During the Second Spanish Period, Ambrose Hull built a two-story stone house on this location (Julia Street and North Riverside Drive in present day New Smyrna) in 1805. He named it 'Mount Olive' because of the abundance of olive trees. These had been planted some 35 years earlier by Turnbull's Mediterranean settlers who brought cuttings of grapes, olives and mulberries..."
Today the site is a public park planted to live oaks, red cedars and St. Augustine sod, but locals have reported having fruiting olive trees on the beach side of New Smyrna for 30 years or longer.
In vending our trees at events throughout Florida, we at Olive Tree Growers are often told by locals of fruiting olive trees that have been in their areas for many years. These trees are in private gardens and not advertised to the public, so their presence is little known.
From personal experience, we know of olive trees at Apalachicola on the Panhandle coast and on nearby St. George Island that have been there for some 40 years. There is at least one olive tree at Marianna, Jackson County, of similar age. Elsewhere in Jackson County, there is a grove of several hundred trees at least 10 years old.
We at Olive Tree Growers have been growing fruiting olive trees in Florida since 1989 but we make no claim to having "introduced" this most wonderful of all trees to the state. There are long-established olive trees here, many of them having reportedly been smuggled from Europe by tourists, which is crime because it risks the introduction of new pests and diseases. Most of these illegal trees are grown from seeds, which do not "come true" to the planted cultivar and thus may never produce fruit.
Don't risk legal problems. You can buy a tree that will make fruit at one of our events (see our Schedule page) or order on-line from our Shop page. For larger purchases you may visit our olive tree nursery by appointment.