Six strains of a hitherto unknown, Gram-stain-positive coccus were recovered from samples of Spanish-style green-olive fermentations. The 16S rRNA gene sequences from these isolates shared 98.7 % and 98.5 % of their nucleotide positions with those from Enterococcus saccharolyticus subsp. taiwanensis 812 T and from E. saccharolyticus subsp. saccharolyticus ATCC 43076 T , respectively. The sequence of the rpoA gene in the isolates was 95 % similar to that of E. saccharolyticus CECT 4309 T (5ATCC 43076 T ). The 16S rRNA and rpoA gene phylogenies revealed that the isolates grouped in a statistically well-supported cluster separate from E. saccharolyticus. Enzyme activity profiles as well as fermentation patterns differentiated the novel bacteria from other members of the Enterococcus genus. Finally, phenotypic, genotypic and phylogenetic data supported the identification of a novel species of the genus Enterococcus, for which the name Enterococcus olivae sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is IGG16.11 T (5CECT Enterococci are Gram-positive cocci belonging to the lactic acid bacteria (LAB) group and are ubiquitous in nature. They are commensal inhabitants of the gastrointestinal tract of mammalians and are also found in fermented foods, dairy products, plants, soil or water (Baele et al., 2000;Devriese et al., 1992;Devriese & Pot, 1995;Franz et al., 1999;Klein, 2003). Enterococci can be involved in human nosocomial infections (Teixeira & Facklam, 2003), but they are also considered beneficial and safe in fermented products (Giraffa, 2002). At the time of this writing, according to the List of Prokaryotic names with Standing in Nomenclature (LPSN; http://www.bacterio.net), the genus Enterococcus consisted of 53 species and 2 subspecies.Spanish-style green-olive fermentations appear to be dominated by Lactobacillus pentosus strains (Ruiz-Barba & Jiménez-Díaz, 2012), but enterococci seem to have a role at the crucial initial stage of these fermentations because of their tolerance to high pH and their LAB characteristics (De Castro et al., 2002;Corsetti et al., 2012). Enterococci isolated from olive fermentations mostly belong to the Enterococcus casseliflavus group (De Castro et al., 2002;De Bellis et al., 2010).During the characterization of the microbiota associated to Spanish-style green-olive fermentations in two large tableolive manufacturing companies (4,000 to 8,000 tonnes of olives handled per season) in the province of Sevilla, southwestern Spain, samples of the fermenting brines of ten 10-tonne fermenters were taken along the different fermentation stages at each fermentation yard (data not shown). These samples were analysed through culture-dependent techniques. The samples were serially diluted and spread on plates of de Man-Rogosa-Sharpe (MRS; Biokar Diagnostics) agar supplemented with 0.02 g bromophenol blue l 21 (AppliChem) and 0.05 % (w/v) L-cysteine (MRS-BPB; Lee & Lee, 2008), and on brain heart infusion (BHI; Biokar Diagnostics) agar supplemented with 0.05 % (w/v) L-cysteine. Plates were incubated an...