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One of the oldest olive trees on earth, this olive tree is estimated to be 3,800 years old.
The oldest tree in Europe that has been scientifically dated to an accurate standard is a 1,230-year-old craggy pine in a popular national park in southern Italy. While an olive tree in a remote pocket of Sardinia has yet to be measured accurately enough for the claim of “oldest,” it is likely over three times as old. Standing 14 meters tall with a trunk that measures 20 meters in circumference, the Patriarca Verde, or “Green Patriarch,” is estimated to be 3,800 years old making it not only one of the oldest trees in Europe but in the world as well. Locals call her S’Ozzastru, which in Sardo (Sardinian dialect) translates to “the wisdom of old age.” While the green giant (a female tree) is fenced off to prevent visitors from hanging on her branches, she neighbors a much younger male wild olive tree (a mere 2,500 years old), whose canopy visitors can enter to see its dense twisting branches dip into and out of the ground.
