The olive is a very plastic tree. It can be grafted and cut and moved and so on. I grew up in Southern California and we lived in an area where there were many very large, completely useless olive trees. They made a huge mess, purple stain all over the driveway and the car and so on, but they were evergreen and they were attractive. We liked them and we needed some olive trees to plant down in the nethermost part of our property. We went next door to an older lady and her husband who had lived there for many years and had lots of olives on their property and asked where we might get one. She said, "Well all you do is you just cut off a little branch, you shave off the bark and you stick it in the dirt and it grows." So that is what we did and I have pictures of these little trees that we grew by doing exactly what you read about in Jacob 5, in which they cut off the branches and stick them in the nethermost part of the vineyard or orchard. Now who would ever think that that would really work? How many trees can you do that with?
Figure 4 Olive Tree Graft. Photo by Derek Winterburn via Flickr.
Wilford Hess wrote an article on the botanical aspects of the olive tree and went into lots of details on their plastic nature, and as far as I can tell there are no trees that you can do that with in upstate New York. But with the olive tree, you can graft and it will live. The roots are very durable. Almost like a Redwood tree, they are very resistant to infection, rot, and mold. And they do not need very much water, but they do need to be pruned and taken care of.
What does it mean to preserve? It means to keep something that was yours to begin with. In effect, God is saying, "This is my work and my glory … to preserve my children, my people. These are the ones that I, as God, care about and want to see preserved." Does it help you to know that he is in the preservation mode? I think so. He wants to preserve absolutely every branch that can possibly be preserved. Some are going to be burned and thrown away and put in the fire because he cannot get the optimal result all the time, and sometimes there will have to be some selecting and choosing. He is trying to preserve everything he possibly can, but some little branches are going to have to be cut and thrown away. What will be preserved is the DNA, the stalk, or in relation to people, the reference is to the lineage, and posterity, in accordance with the eternal principle that we will eventually all be brought back into his presence.
Wilford M. Hess, Daniel J. Fairbanks, John W. Welch, and Jonathan K. Driggs, "Botanical Aspects of Olive Culture Relevant to Jacob 5," in The Allegory of the Olive Tree: The Olive, the Bible, and Jacob 5, ed. Stephen D. Ricks and John W. Welch (Provo and Salt Lake City, UT: FARMS and Deseret Book, 1994), 484–561.
Book of Mormon Central, "Why Did Zenos Give So Many Details About Raising Good Olives? (Jacob 5:9–10)," KnoWhy 71 (April 5, 2016).