The olive tree is an evergreen and age-long tree. The cultivation of the olive tree is restricted to the two temperate zones and especially to the Mediterranean Basin, which sustains 98% of the world wide plant potentiality and production. Cultivating olive trees is not demanding and this is why they can survive even in particularly inaccessible areas.

 The European olive tree (this is the olive tree which produces olive oil) has many varieties. There are about 130 varieties of olive trees with 50 of them being the most well known. Some of these varieties are the result of a long developing and adaptation process in the same micro-climates where other species grew due to lab development. Depending on the variety of the plant, olive trees can be categorised as small-fruit, medium-fruit, large-fruit and ornamental (non-fruiting).

Thassos has a Mediterranean climate favoring the cultivation of olive trees, both in flat and mountainous areas, and enabling the production of fruit during the winter. In the area of Thassos there are olive trees more than 700 hundred years old.

The dominating variety of olive tree on Thassos is called throubolia or Thassian olive. It is mainly cultivated on Thasos and other areas like Attica, the Aegean Islands (Chios, Samos, Naxos) and on Crete. It belongs to the middle-fruit variety of olive trees and it is suitable for consumption. The fruit is of medium size with an average weight of about 3-5gr, and an oil capacity up to 25% of the highest quality. The Thassian olive (throuba) has the ability to loose its bitterness by itself while maturing on the tree and therefore it is considered a unique delicacy for the Mediterranean table.