Drained as a dud battery

Reading^ about the Fair Trade programme to replant the West Bank with olive trees, prompted me to look again at the chapter on Olive in Julian Barnard’s book*. He discusses how olive plants (like vines) are subject to constant coercion, dominion and pruning by human beings.  Olive trees, once their annual fruit harvest starts to fail, are chopped back to the ground, from where they will produce shoots that eventually form a new tree.  Thus an olive tree can essentially be over 900 years old, based in the same soil, faced with the same blazing sun for 9 centuries. No wonder it becomes tired out. “Olive gives, giving until exhausted.”*

Artwork by kind permission of Inga Berkensträter, BFRP

But the resilience which is integral to the olive tree is also echoed in the flower remedy. “…yet through the scent of water it will bud and bring forth branches like a young plant.” Julian Barnard includes this quote from the bible** and we receive this benefit from taking the Olive remedy when we need it: our strength of mind, body and spirit is restored. We partake of the olive’s ability to regenerate, revive, renew.

The 2-3 year old saplings being planted in Palestine will not mature enough to give fruit for another 5 years. Olive trees mature at 15 – and will struggle on with their existence until they are 800-1000 years old.  We can see how exhaustion is a key note in the Olive flower remedy. Exhaustion as in completely depleted. As drained as a dud battery.

Fascinatingly, in Gwenda’s book on the flower remedies^^ she describes how olives contain oleic acid, a compound also released by some insects such as ants when they die. She recounts an experiment where an ant was daubed with oleic acid. It was immediately sensed as being dead by the other ants and was ejected from the nest. Only after the ant managed to clean itself of the smell was it allowed to return. Gwenda calls it the smell of, ‘I’m dead’ – exactly how those in need of Olive might think of themselves!

 

For more information on all the flower remedies, see my new book, details here.

^  Positive News, Jan 2026

*   Bach Flower Remedies Form and Function, Julian Barnard @HealingHerbs

**  Job 14:9

^^ The Plants of Dr Bach, Gwenda Kyd