Phoenix Species, Date Palm

The date palm, which give out tasty fruit, is a fine choice for a landscape tree. Although if you are around when your seed-grown one mat...Read Moreures or have one of these palms, it would be a pain to obtain the fruit. Regardless if you are planning it to fruit you need a male and female, but even if you don't get any, it's still a nice tree. They love the warmth and dry climates. Here in Fresno California, they are every were! Litteraly, there is not a neighbor hood or near buildings, with out a date palm. Palmbob has a point. Even here they are trimmed and when that happens, it makes them look dull. Planting the seeds are not hard neither. My technique I just did for the first time about one or two weeks ago. First the day before, I soaked the seeds for 24 hours in room temp. water. Then what I did was got a ziplock baggie, and some new zealand sphagnum moss, I soaked it, and then squeezed it till no drops came out. Then I drained the water from the cup and took out the seeds, and mixed them with the baggie and moss. I zipped up the baggie containing the seeds in the moist (not wet) moss. Then choose a really hot place in your house. I used my garage, during the day it gets incredibly hot in there. Check on them every few days. Be sure to keep them OUT of direct sunlight (it will roast them) It just so happends that yesterday afternoon, I went to check on them and they had little roots. The roots will burst out in the middle on the side without the parting line.

This is the edible date palm. IT is a wonderful specimen palm for any garden in the Southern US, from California to Florida. It has an ...Read Moreattractive blue-green coloration of the leaves (more so in the drier climates) and a very tall, ornamental 'woven' trunk look to it. It can grow up to about 80' of trunk, perhaps more. It loves hot, dry climates, but can do great in humid climates, as well (for edible dates to be produced, you need a hot, dry climate normally). It is dioecious (needs male and female trees to make fertile seed). It is a suckering palm, though in cultivation, most keep trimming away the suckers to give it that monolithic look. Without trimming, it can become a very difficult palm to deal with, having sharp spines and sharp tips to the leaflets. THis is one of the faster growing palms you can get in the US.

The source of this species is probably northern Africa, but it has been in cultivation so long (over 5000 years), true wild populations are hard to identify. It is thought by some to be a cultivated form of Phoenix theophrastii, aslo from Northern Africa and Crete.

Dozens of cultivars have been created, some which are grown extensively in California's Coachella Valley, an ideal climate for date palms (hot and dry and rarely freezes).

Like all Phoenix species, Date palms are dioecious (separate male and female plants). In cultivation, usually one male palm (called a Macho Date Palm) is planted in the center of a large number (50 or more) female date palms (that produce the fruit) as the pollen source. It is a suckering species, and if not kept pruned can become a huge mess of trunks and impenetrable, spiny leaves. It is the suckers that are produced that are usually taken off and propagated to continue a line of a certain variety, so that not only the variety can be continued and refined, but the sex of the plant will be known (all suckers are the same sex as the parent)