Carbon dating tests have indicated that olive trees in a Bidnija grove are not as old as previously thought, but still date back to the 17th century.

Heritage Malta said it is using funds donated by The Melita Foundation to date an olive grove in Bidnija.

"The nearby presence of the buried remains of a structure, possibly a villa, from the Roman period, where oil used to be produced, had led to the assumption that the olive trees date back to Roman times, specifically to around 1,800 years ago," Heritage Malta said.

A laboratory was engaged to perform tests on six samples for carbon dating. The samples were taken from a slice of a dead tree trunk longer than one metre in diameter. The results showed that the trees date back to the 17th century.

"Since the olive tree can regenerate itself, the possibility that the trees at the Bidnija grove are older is still not excluded. Therefore, the trunk slice is currently being studied by a local expert, aided by Heritage Malta’s Diagnostic Science Laboratories, in what is known as tree ringing, where the age of a trunk is calculated by the number and the distance of the concentric circles observed in the cross-section," the agency said.

This process, however, could be hindered by the very structure of the trunk since olive trunks become gnarled and twisted as they grow, it added.

Thanks to The Melita Foundation’s financial aid, a geophysical study was also conducted to obtain more detailed information about the nearby Roman remains and to ascertain more precisely the extent of these archaeological remains.