Talk:Olea europaea subsp. europaea

Articles are a mess

The two articles Olive and this one are a mess. No reliable source recognizes the title of this article, Olea oleaster, but treats it as Olea europea subsp. europea. The article actually starts by saying that it's a subspecies of the cultivated olive tree, Olea europea. But Olea europea redirects to Olive. I guess that three topics could be distinguished:

1. the truly wild European olive Olea europea subsp. europea – but this seems not to exist
2. cultivars of Olea europea subsp. europea
3. "feral" Olea europea subsp. europea, i.e. formerly cultivated trees and their offspring that are effectively wild

However, I'm not clear that it's really possible to separate (2) and (3). Both are discussed to some extent in the current two articles. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:25, 10 January 2026 (UTC)

At olive there's a distribution map claimed to the Olea europaea s.l., but that map looks more like Olea europaea s.s. (covering the European and Saharan subspecies). Further down the article covers most of the subspecies recognised at POWO (POWO splits the Asian populations from the E/S African populations.

Possibly olive and Olea europaea could be split - the former including the cultivars and the product, and the latter the species as a whole, the other subspecies and the feral/wild populations of subsp. europaea. Then Olea oleaster would be a candidate for merging into Olea europaea. Lavateraguy (talk) 19:44, 11 January 2026 (UTC)

Agree with @Lavateraguy; POWO also gives O. oleaster as a synonym of O. europaea subsp. europaea. - MPF (talk) 18:47, 12 January 2026 (UTC)