Wikipedia Draft:Swan Hill Olives®

Swan Hill Olives® are a cultivated variety (cultivar) of olive trees that are widely grown in residential, commercial, and public landscapes because they produce virtually no pollen or fruit.

Although olive trees have been cultivated for thousands of years.. not only for their fruit but also as ornamentals -- especially because of their evergreen, attractive gray-green foliage, with willowy shoots, and picturesque, gnarled older trunks and branches -- olive trees as ornamental plantings have had the great disadvantage of producing fruits over the winter and early spring that are a nuisance when dropped, discoloring sidewalks, adhering to shoes, and attracting birds with their droppings. In addition, the pollen produced by olive trees is so allergenic that the importation and sale of regular, fruiting varieties of olive trees are banned in Clark County, Nevada, and in Pima and Maricopa Counties of Arizona.

However, Swan Hill Olives® have imperfect flowers and produce less than one percent of the normal pollen for olive trees and thus alleviate the problem of allergic reactions as well as the production of bothersome fruit.

Discovered near the town of Swan Hill in Northern Victoria Province, Australia, by a University of California, Davis, researcher, the cultivar has proven so popular that Swan Hill Olives® has become a Registered Trademark of Devil Mountain Tree Company, LLC.

Because Swan Hill Olives® do not expend energy making fruit, they tend to grow somewhat faster than normal olive trees, often reaching a height of 30 feet in just 15 years

In addition, trees of Swan Hill Olives® are often grafted onto a rootstock that is resistant to verticillium wilt, which kills many common olive trees

Like common olive trees, Swan Hill Olives® thrive in partial shade to full sun and are drought tolerant, which makes them desirable especially in areas with water-conservation ordinances.