The people in the lands where date palms grow say that these trees must keep their feet wet and their heads dry. The trees need water but they have to have bright sun-shine, too. They grow well in the irrigated lands near the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Dates are the chief crop in the oases of the Sahara. And millions of date palms grow along the Nile in Egypt.
From these hot, dry regions near the Mediterranean the date palm has been carried to other regions. There are date orchards in California and Arizona.
Date palms produce one crop a year. A healthy tree bears several clusters. A big cluster may weigh as much as 40 pounds. Dates are red or yellow before they are ripe. Ripe dates are purple.
When a tree is young, its dates are easy to gather. But as it gets older it grows tall. Gathering the dates from a palm 100 feet tall is not easy.
Not all date palms bear dates. Some— the male trees—furnish only pollen. The ones that bear the dates are the female trees. Before dates will form, pollen from the flowers of the male trees must reach the flowers of the female trees. In the beginning date palms had to depend on the wind to carry their pollen. But long ago date growers found a way of making sure that pollen would reach the flowers of the female tree. They gathered bunches of pollen-bearing flowers and tied them to the clusters of flowers of the female tree.
Dates can be dried easily. They keep very well. Many people have never seen fresh dates. But dried dates are in the markets almost everywhere.
