In Genesis, what did Noah's dove return with after the Flood waters receded?

In Genesis, Noah's dove returned with an olive leaf after the Flood waters receded.

Genesis 8:11 says the dove came back to Noah in the evening carrying a freshly plucked olive leaf. The sign showed that the waters had diminished enough for vegetation to reappear or become reachable. Noah later sent the dove out again, and it did not return, indicating that the land was becoming habitable.

This episode helped make the dove and olive branch widely recognized symbols of peace, hope, and the end of conflict. The biblical wording specifically identifies the object as an olive leaf, not a complete branch or a different type of plant.

The dove was sent after Noah had already used a raven as a test of the changing conditions. The two birds are therefore part of a sequence in Genesis 8. In popular retellings, the olive leaf is sometimes called an olive branch, but the canonical answer to the wording is an olive leaf.