Tree of the Week: Date Palm

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The date palm -- Phoenix dactylifera

Date palms have been cultivated for at least 4,000 years. They are the classic trees of the desert oasis. They were probably named for the Phoenician word ‘phoenix,’ which means ‘date palm.’ Their origins are lost in antiquity; it may have been the Mideast, or Northern Africa. The Arabs spread them around the warm world and, in 1765, the Spaniards introduced them to Mexico and California.

In this country, they are grown in Southern California and Arizona. They only fruit well in hot climates, but because they may outlive their commercial purposes in desert plantations, trees are sometimes transplanted (fairly easy) to spend the remainder of a century-long life lining a street or gracing a development.

This tree grows slowly to 80 feet tall, with a leaf crown 20 to 40 feet wide. Bases of old leaf stalks diagonally mark the gray trunk. The tree sends up numerous suckers; it would be multi-trunked if allowed to grow naturally. The 18- to 20-foot-long, 2-foot-wide, gray-green waxy leaves have stiff, sharp pointed leaflets; a tree can have up to 125 green leaves. Flower clusters, called inflorescences, carry as many as 10,000 tiny flowers.

The trees are called dioecious (‘two houses’) because male and female flowers grow on different trees. To increase yield, commercial growers plant cuttings from female trees rather than seeds; they interplant only a few male trees, and they hand-pollinate the female flowers. The resulting dates are oval in shape, up to 2.5 inches long, and vary from red to yellow when unripe. Fruit thinning and almost all orchard work are done by hand.

The over 3,000 varieties worldwide are classified as soft (e.g. ‘Medjool’), semi-dry (e.g. ‘Deglet Noor’) or dry (e.g. ‘Thoory’); they are sweet, contain a big seed and little moisture. The tree needs full sun, access to a regular supply of water and, in the city, professional removal of heavy old leaves. It is not a tree for most Los Angeles gardens. Indigenous cultures use every part of the date palm for food, medicinal or building purposes.

-- Pieter Severynen

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