Not far from the Demeter-Temple, at the beginning of the dirt road that leads to the Castle of Apalírou, lies an antique spring named Brysi Adisárou in a small valley shaded with Plane trees.
This little path leads to the spring of Adisárou. It has water all year round.
Nearby lies this small, new chapel of Ágios Isídoros.
The real sight of this place is a very old Olive tree growing close to the spring. Its diameter surpasses that of the supposedly oldest Olive tree of the world in Kolymbári in Crete quite a bit. Our tree is completely hollow insides as happens quite often with old Olive trees, but the diameter of the remnants of the stem is more than 5 meter in one direction and more than 10 meter in the other. It is possible though that the giant consisted initially of two trees growing close to each other.
And here our gigantic Olive tree. From the inside it is completely hollow which is quite common with old Olive trees.
In spite of its age the tree seems quite healthy.
With some old Olive trees in the Tragaía the stem begins to disintegrate in the same way.
The biggest tree of the world is said to be a Montezuma Cypress in Mexico with a diameter of about 14 meters. The Olive trees in the Garden Gethsemane, whose age is estimated as 1000 to 2000 years, have a diameter of not much more than a meter. The age of the Olive tree in Kolymbári with 3,64 meters diameter is estimated as 5000 years. As far as the age of our tree here is concerned – if our way to calculate is only roughly right than this tree must stand here since the beginning of the bronze age, even if we consider only its smaller diameter of 5 meters. This is of some consequence since from this time we hardly have any evidence that Olive trees were growing in the Cyclades at all.
Besides this tree provides us with evidence of the amount of erosion that has taken place since its youth: The original trunk base lies now in a height of about a meter. That is not so much of a change considering the long time span that has passed since then.
