In the Genesis flood story, what did Noah’s dove return with?

In the Genesis flood story, Noah’s dove returned with a fresh olive leaf.

Genesis 8:10–11 describes Noah waiting seven days before sending the dove again. When it returned that evening, it carried a freshly plucked olive leaf, showing that the floodwaters had receded enough for vegetation to appear. Noah understood this as evidence that the earth was becoming habitable again.

The olive branch or leaf later became a widely recognized symbol of peace and reconciliation. That later symbolism grows from the biblical scene, although Genesis itself focuses on the practical message: the waters were going down and plants were growing.

The detail is sometimes misremembered as a branch, but the wording in Genesis specifies a fresh olive leaf. The story does not say that the dove found a complete tree or that it landed on a mountain; it returned to Noah inside the ark.