Date Palm

Phoenix dactylifera
commonly known as the Date Palm, is a palm
in the genus Phoenix, extensively cultivated for
its edible sweet fruit. Due to its long history of
cultivation for fruit, its exact native distribution
is unknown, but probably originated
somewhere in the desert oases of northern
Africa, and perhaps also southwest Asia. It is a
medium-sized tree, 15–25 m tall, often clumped
with several trunks from a single root system,
but often growing singly as well. The leaves
are pinnate, 3–5 m long, with spines on the
petiole and about 150 leaflets; the leaflets are
30 cm long and 2 cm broad. The full span of
the crown ranges from 6 to 10 meters.

The fruit is a drupe known as a date.[1] Dates
are oval-cylindrical, 3–7 cm long, and 2–3 cm
diameter, and when unripe, range from bright
red to bright yellow in colour, depending on
variety. Dates contain a single seed about 2–2.5
cm long and 6–8 mm thick. Three main cultivar
groups of date exist: soft (e.g. 'Barhee', 'Halawy',
'Khadrawy', 'Medjool'), semi-dry (e.g. 'Dayri',
'Deglet Noor', 'Zahidi'), and dry (e.g. 'Thoory').
The type of fruit depends on the glucose,
fructose and sucrose content.

The date palm is dioecious, having separate
male and female plants. They can be easily
grown from seed, but only 50% of seedlings will
be female and hence fruit bearing, and dates
from seedling plants are often smaller and of
poorer quality. Most commercial plantations thus
use cuttings of heavily cropping cultivars, mainly
'Medjool' as this cultivar produces particularly
high yields of large, sweet fruit. Plants grown
from cuttings will fruit 2–3 years earlier than
seedling plants.

The date palm must have full sun. It cannot live in
the shade. It will grow in all warm climates where
the temperature rarely falls to 20°F (-6.67°C).
When the palm is dormant, it can stand
temperatures that low, but when in flower or fruit
the mean temperature must be above 64°F (17.78°
Commercial fruit production is possible only where
there is a long, hot growing season with daily
maximum temperatures of 90°F (32.22°C) and
virtually no rain—less than 1/2 in (1.25 cm) in the
ripening season. The date can tolerate long
periods of drought though, for heavy bearing, it
has a high water requirement. This is best supplied
by periodic flooding from the rivers in North Africa
and by subsurface water rather than by rain. (See
remarks on irrigation under "Culture").