Black and green olives?

[Snadger]

Are black olives a seperate species from green olives or are they just left on the tree longer?

[vicky]

I'm pretty sure black olives are just riper green olives. I've got a couple of little trees and the olives were green at first and have now gone black.

[BarleySugar]

Green olives are unripe black olives, but to make either one edible they have to be processed. It looked pretty complicated, brine to leach out bitterness, and some methods talked about using sodium hydroxide. A google search comes up with the goods. My olive tree produced a few fruit each year, but not enough to be bothered with. I just like the look of it!