Real date palm

Real date palm
	Real date palms in Morocco
Systematics
Order :	Palm- like arecales
Family :	Palm family (Arecaceae)
Subfamily :	Coryphoideae
Tribe :	Phoeniceae
Genre :	Date Palms ( Phoenix )
Type :	Real date palm
Scientific name
	Phoenix dactylifera
	L.

The real date palm ( Phoenix dactylifera ) is a species of the genus date palms ( Phoenix ) in the family of the palm plants (Arecaceae). Their fruits are called dates . The real date palm is an ancient oriental cultivated plant whose human use can be traced back to the archives of Mesopotamia .

description

The real date palm reaches heights of 15 to 20 meters. The base of the fronds remains on the trunk . The leaves are fronds; they are 3 to 5 m long and have about 30 cm long and 2 cm wide plumage . There are spines in the lower part of the fronds .

Phoenix species are dioecious separate sexes ( diocesan ). The axillary inflorescences are simply branched with a large bract . The stalked or sessile flowers are unisexual and threefold. The three sepals and three petals are fused together. The crown is longer than the chalice. The male flowers usually contain three stamens , the stamens of which are fused at their base. The female flowers contain three free carpels and six intergrown staminodes . The scars sit directly on the carpels without a stylus. Fleshy drupes are formed that hang from the palm in large, grape-like fruit clusters.

The first dates can be harvested after 5 to 6 years.

Cultivation

As a desert plant, the date palm needs a lot of sun and, especially in the summer months, a lot of water. Otherwise the plant is considered undemanding and can cope with nutrient-poor soils. It grows slowly and is considered hardier than its relative, the Canary Island date palm ( Phoenix canariensis ).

Numerous variants of the dates have been bred over the millennia so that their fruit color varies from red to black.

The cultivation of dates takes place in palm gardens. The plants have a useful life of 80 to 100 years, so such a garden must be carefully planned. Since the fruits only arise from fertilized flowers every two years, 2 to 3 males are planted for around 100 female plants. The yield "per tree" can then be up to 100 kg per harvest season. The fruit formation takes place at an outside temperature of 30 to 35 degrees Celsius. The plants need a lot of water. For this reason, such a garden must be well watered or the plants need access to groundwater.

Preservation

In the extremely dry climate of the growing countries, the fruits of the various date palm varieties conserve themselves due to their high sugar content - comparable to figs and grapes - and they can be kept at least until the next harvest.

Economical meaning

A large part of the production remains in the countries themselves and is further processed. In addition to fruits (fresh and dried), the products of date production are date oil, date schnapps (and vinegar). A juice can be tapped from the trunk of older date palms, which is immediately in the fermentation process and is fermented as palm wine . The leaves can be used to make all kinds of wickerwork.

Worldwide date production (2012)

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization FAO, around 8.5 million t of dates were harvested worldwide in 2018 .

The following table gives an overview of the ten largest producers of dates worldwide, who produced a total of 89.7% of the harvest.

Largest date producers (2018)
rank	country	Quantity (in t )
1	Egypt Egypt	1,562,171
2	Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia	1,302,859
3	Iran Iran	1,204,158
4th	Algeria Algeria	1,094,700
5	Iraq Iraq	614,584
6th	Pakistan Pakistan	471,670
7th	Sudan Sudan	440.871
8th	Oman Oman	368,808
9	United Arab Emirates United Arab Emirates	345.119
10	Tunisia Tunisia	241,333
	world	8,527,442

Pests

Like many other crops, date palms have pests; The red palm weevil ( Rhynchophorus ferrugineus ), which has been spreading in the Mediterranean since around 1994, should be mentioned here at the moment . It is dangerous because it lays its eggs inside the date palm and, if damage is visible, only cutting and destroying it helps.

Fungi can also affect the date palm. Bayoud's disease with the fungus Fusarium oxysporum destroyed large populations in Algeria and Morocco. New cultivars of the date palm are no longer so susceptible to this fungus.

Special

In 1963, around two thousand years old date kernels were found during excavations in the Masada fortress . In 2005, researchers made one of the germs grow. The plant is known today as the Judean date palm and is the record holder in age-related germination capacity. Since the beginning of 2020, another six seedlings have been sprouting from kernels found in Qumran by the Dead Sea and Massada.