Immortalizing Ancient Olive Trees Through Images

The pic­turesque pre­fec­ture of Laconia in the south­ern-most tip of main­land Greece holds a rep­u­ta­tion for its impres­sive vari­eties of olive trees — apart from host­ing the leg­endary city of Sparta as its cap­i­tal, that is.

In Laconia, there are olive trees bear­ing olive vari­eties like Athinolie, Koutsourolie and Koroneike, along­side many other local species dat­ing back to antiq­uity, as Medieval Greek geo­g­ra­pher Pausanias observed in the 2^nd cen­tury AD and in his book the ​“Description of Greece.”

These are the same vari­eties Adoni Dimakos, a repat from Canada, stum­bles upon every day in his bid to explore the very areas described in Pausanias’ book. Much to his awe, the cor­re­la­tions between ancient ruins and enor­mous olive tree trunks are astound­ing. And there’s more.

Dimakos has been in the his­tor­i­cally and nat­u­rally priv­i­leged area for a year, but his pas­sion for pho­tog­ra­phy, motocross, his­tory and nat­ural beauty has already inspired him to spear­head an ambi­tious project of pho­tograph­ing time-hon­ored olive trees, as illus­trated in his web­site olivetree123.com.

Unfortunately, he finds Greece in its sev­enth year of reces­sion. Decades of mis­man­age­ment in all things agri­cul­ture have also cre­ated an unfair state of affairs for the national emblem of the olive oil tree. ​“As a result of what I call fac­tory farm­ing, dig­ni­fied trees that once stood tall and proud are reduced to a meter high stub, a com­mon prac­tice see­ing as it requires a bull­dozer to rip out an olive tree’s deep roots and not many peo­ple can afford to do this,” Dimakos reports from Laconia.

Farmers sim­ply chain­saw them and leave behind a fright­ful reminder of the trees’ for­mer glory, and this for wood burn­ing, or to make room for plant­ing new crop. Moreover, dur­ing the years where sub­si­dies were being doled out to farm­ers for them to plant orange trees, many ancient olive trees were ripped out of the soil to be replaced with orange trees,” the Greek nature-lover said.

Under these cir­cum­stances, Dimakos wants olivetree123.com to become an online almanac. It will act as a repos­i­tory of ancient and rare olive tree spec­i­mens, he said, and help save from extinc­tion the remain­ing ancient olive oil trees scat­tered all over the Greek coun­try­side. Hopefully, and with the increas­ing pub­lic­ity it is gain­ing — peo­ple from across Europe are already jump­ing on board to sup­port his cause by shar­ing their pho­tos with him to post on the web­site — it can moti­vate the local author­i­ties to insti­gate some kind of leg­is­la­tion to pro­tect the ancient trees.

Another hope is that the ini­tia­tive will sen­si­tize local farm­ers, who, influ­enced by adver­sity, prob­a­bly ignore the national trea­sures that sur­round them. ​“I do not hold grudges against local com­mu­ni­ties for not being recep­tive to my cause,” answers Dimakos. ​“Modern farm­ers have fam­i­lies to feed, and if they can increase their har­vest by plant­ing four or five olive saplings in the place of one regal, but no longer fruit-pro­duc­ing tree, they will. But I will do any­thing to help raise aware­ness regard­ing this epi­demic, to inform the pub­lic and to immor­tal­ize such stately olive trees by way of pho­tog­ra­phy.”

To all appear­ances, Mother Nature has already taken care of the olive oil tree ​“immor­tal­iza­tion” detail. A Greek say­ing has it that the olive tree is immor­tal. ​“Even if a tree stump is a foot off the ground, it will release buds and grow branches right away,” con­firmed Dimakos.

Hundreds of years may pass before the stump morphs into the paragon of per­fec­tion that bears the fruite for Liquid Gold, but nature has made the olive one of the most resilient trees on Earth.

“Except for the bio­log­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance of such a fact, this means that olive oil and all its culi­nary and health ben­e­fits will con­tinue to find their way to our kitchens and din­ing tables,” a spir­ited Adoni Dimakos con­cluded with ances­tral wis­dom in a sen­tence.

• Adoni Dimakos