Olive vegetable oil is obtained by cold pressing the fruit of the botanical species Olea europaea L., which belongs to the Oleaceae family.

It is a small, evergreen, long-lived tree that can reach up to 15 meters in height, with a wide canopy and thick, twisted trunk. Its bark is finely fissured, gray or silvery in color. The leaves are opposite, ranging from 2 to 8 cm in length, lance-shaped with a slightly pointed tip, entire, leathery, glabrous, and dark gray-green on the upper side, paler and densely scaly on the underside, more or less sessile or with a very short petiole.

So the flowers are hermaphroditic, in multiflowered axillary panicles, with white corollas. The fruit, the olive, is a fleshy and highly oily drupe, ranging from 1 to 3.5 cm in length, oval or somewhat globular, initially green, which requires approximately half a year, in varieties used for oil production, to acquire a black-purple color at full maturity. Its flowering period occurs between May and July in the northern hemisphere, and between November and January in the southern hemisphere, while its fruiting period takes place between September and December in the northern hemisphere, and between March and June in the southern hemisphere. From this fruit, a highly valued oil is obtained in gastronomy—olive oil.