Do Olives Grow in Orchards?
Or Do They Wish They Grew in Groves?
By Thomas DeVere Wolsey
Collective nouns are the words we use to describe a group of individual nouns. Halloween examples, because it is October 27, include a legion of demons and a coven of witches. We have many collective nouns in English for groups of trees: forest, jungle, copse, woods, orchard, and grove[i], for example. Which one to use is often a matter of context. When we discuss olives, which collective noun works best? Context is everything, folks.
Groves and Orchards
We might say we harvested apples in the orchard, or we squeezed oranges freshly picked from the grove. Both apples and oranges are fruit trees, usually planted in an orderly fashion for harvesting, so why the difference? They are both fruit trees planted with the intention of a harvest at some time during the year, after all.
The dictionary definitions of grove and orchard are helpful, but not…definitive. Merriam-Webster tells us a grove is a small wood with no underbrush, but it is also a planting of fruit or nut trees[ii]. They define orchard as a planting of fruits, nuts, or maples[iii]. Useful information but not particularly helpful if we don’t know whether a group of fruit trees should be called an orchard or a grove.
