In the last few years, in Salento region, south Italy, a bacterium “Xylella fastidiosa” is killing millions of olive trees. There’s no cure. Xylella caused massive economic and environmental losses, but another, more intimate loss afflicts the lives of the locals who are deeply tied to the olive tree: that relating to their own identity. This work explores how an epidemic in plant world can affect the relationship between a community and its own land, eradicating centuries of history and culture of a people.