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N OLIVE SHELL, GREAT BARRIER REEF
This Oliva bulbosa is more inflated or bulbous than most olives. With a glossy sheen and a great variety of abstract patterns, ribbons, curves and tent shapes, olives are especially attractive, and natives across the Pacific islands have used them as money for centuries.
We are not the first to see a letter in an olive. In the mid-1700s conchologist Dezallier d’Argenville claimed that he could make out three Roman letters on a Pacific specimen of Oliva sayana, shell, called “the Lettered Olive” for its varied design. |
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