With the beginning of Spring, it is nearly warm enough, aside from some frosty mornings, to put some of the plants back on the balcony. Indoors real estate (with a view and a share of the sun) came at a premium and a lot of the houseplants were crowded and vying for space. I have had this ornamental olive tree for years and it has refused to grow much, since with the onset of Winter, it would drop all of its leaves and go dormant, which I figured was normal, especially in German climes, because a few tentacles of leaves would come back every year and continued to branch out over the summer.
It was always a little pathetic, however, since it never was again full and bushy and I would trim back the decidedly dead twigs and thread the one or two strands of leaves around, like a comb-over on a balding man. I keep trying with this one and I refuse to give up. It has sprouted a single leafing branch late this Winter again, however, this time, in revolt to whatever I am doing wrong, it seems to have evolved, mutated with these big wanky leaves that don’t appear to be regular olive leaves at all, which ought to be narrower and more cactus-like. 
Maybe it’s some parasitic plant, I thought, at first, but it seems to be part of the olive tree. If this is the case, I never knew that a plant’s frustration could lead to adaptation. Here are some proper olive trees in temperate Rome, growing around the Triumphal Arch of Constantine, just behind the Colosseum.
