Flora Unveiled

Roman and Greek Botany j 247

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The Degeneration of Olive Trees as Proof of Original Sin

As discussed in Chapter 8, because of the hybrid nature of most cultivated fruit trees (that

is, their heterozygosity), Greek farmers knew that such crops did not breed true when prop-

agated by seed, but underwent a deterioration in quality. Roman farmers were similarly

aware of this phenomenon, as illustrated by the following passage from Virgil’s Georgics:

Some seeds I've seen, though chosen with time and care,

Degenerate still, unless with human hand

The largest were selected every year.

But so it is; it is the will of fate

that all things backward turn, all things deteriorate.^39

Fortunately, desirable varieties of wild olive and other fruit trees could be propagated

vegetatively from cuttings, allowing for “instant domestication.”

The degeneration of seed- grown olive trees was such a well- known phenomenon that St.

Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo, cited it as “palpable evidence” for the truth of original sin:

It is, no doubt, very wonderful that what has been forgiven in the parent [original sin]

should still be held against the offspring; but nevertheless such is the case. That this

mysterious verity, which unbelievers neither see nor believe, might get some palpable

evidence in its support, God in his providence has secured the example of certain

trees. For why should we not suppose that for this very purpose the wild olive springs

from the [domesticated] olive? Is it a wonderful thing, then, how those who them-

selves have been delivered by grace from the bondage of sin, should still beget those

who are tied and bound by the self- same chain, and who require the same process of

loosening? Yes, and we admit the wonderful fact. But that the embryo of wild olive

trees should latently exist in the germs of true olives, who would deem credible, if it

were not proved true by experiment and observation? In the same manner, therefore,

as a wild olive grows out of the seed of the wild olive, and from the seed of the true

olive springs nothing but a wild olive, notwithstanding the very great difference there

is between the wild olive and the [true] olive; so what is born in the flesh, either of a

sinner or of a just man, is in both instances a sinner, notwithstanding the vast distinc-

tion which exists between the sinner and the righteous man.^40

At a later point, Augustine traces the source of original sin to Adam, who “changed from

a pure olive ... into a wild olive” and thereby converted the entire race into a “wild olive

stock.” Only God’s grace can turn a bad olive into a “good olive,” which constitutes proof

of the necessity of baptism:

That, however, which in the case of a regenerate parent, as in the seed of the pure olive,

is covered without any guilt, which has been pardoned, is still no doubt retained in

the case of his offspring, which is yet unregenerate, as in the wild olive, with all its

guilt, until then also it be remitted by the self- same grace. When Adam sinned, he

was changed from that pure olive, which had no such corrupt seed whence should