Ancient olive

About 400 years ago this giant olive root was a single sapling. It looks like two or three separate trees but is in fact a single tree. It grew and it grew, it spread sideways, new shoots emerged, some were cut, some survived, until now when it is a lovely person. Luigi the owner of the olive grove, who has just retired, and now spends much more time with his trees, tells me that the root system used to be much bigger and he has a photo of himself as a child standing beside it. His father thought it was taking up too much space so cut a lot of it back. Or maybe he just needed some firewood.