I see so many dry olive trees that the countryside sometimes takes on a ghostly atmosphere.
These cellulose pachyderms appear to have been petrified by a toxic wind or a fiery ash eruption. As if something catastrophic caught them by surprise. But no. It’s an organism invisible to the human eye. It’s a bacterium: Xylella.
A few micrometers in size, yet it managed to produce damage on a scale of hundreds of miles. It seems that the smallest things create the most serious damage.
I am walking through Salento. Step by step, I absorb the changes that this land has experienced.
In various parts of the world the subspecies of Xylella have decimated orchards and vineyards.
This bacterium produces a disease in olive trees that causes them to dry completely, as if blocking the flow in their vital arteries. There is no cure yet.
Among the recent attempts is an experiment of training dogs to sniff out infected trees, to eradicate them in time, before they pass the disease to those next by.
