The Date-Palm 387 



(hai tsun M tf , Chamaerops excelsa). 1 The trees planted in Kwah-cou 

 bear fruit once in three or five years. The fruits resemble the green 

 jujube growing in the north, but are smaller. They turn from green 

 to yellow. When the leaves have come out, the fruit is formed in 

 clusters, each cluster generally bearing from three to twenty berries, 

 which require careful handling. The foreign as well as the domestic 

 kind is consumed in our country. In color it resembles that of granulated 

 sugar. Shell and meat are soft and bright. Baked into cakes or steamed 

 in water, they are savory. The kernel is widely different from that of 

 the jujube of the north. The two ends are not pointed [as in the jujube], 

 but doubly rolled up and round like a small piece of red kino ^ $l. 2 

 They must be carefully handled. When sown, no shoots sprout forth 

 for a long time, so that one might suppose they would never mature." 



The date is clearly described in this text; and we learn from it that 

 the tree was cultivated in Kwan-tuh, and its fruit was also imported 

 during the T'ang period. As Liu Sun, author of that work, lived under 

 the Emperor Cao Tsuii (a.d. 889-904), this notice refers to the end of 

 the ninth century. 3 A. de Candolle 4 states erroneously that the 

 Chinese received the tree from Persia in the third century of our era. 



In his note on the date, headed by the term wu-lou tse, Li Si-oen 5 

 has produced a confusion of terms, and accordingly brought together 



1 In the text of this work, as cited in the Pen ts'ao kan mu, this clause is worded 

 as follows: "The leaves are like those of the tsun-lii fS| fl?3 (Chamaerops excelsa), 

 and hence the people of that locality style the tree [the date] hai tsun ('sea,' that is, 

 'foreign coir-palm')." This would indeed appear more logical than the passage 

 above, rendered after the edition of W u yin tien, which, however, must be regarded 

 as more authoritative. Not only in this extract, but also in several others, does the 

 Pen ts'ao kan mu exhibit many discrepancies from the Wu yin tien edition; this 

 subject should merit closer study. In the present case there is only one other point 

 worthy of special mention; and this is, that Li §i-cen, in his section of nomenclature, 

 gives the synonyme ^§ He f an t sao ("foreign jujube") with reference to the Lin 

 piao lu i. This term, however, does not occur in the text of this work as trans- 

 mitted by him, or in the Wu yin tien edition. The latter has added a saying of the 

 Emperor Wen j£ of the Wei dynasty, which has nothing to do with the date, and 

 in which is found the phrase /L ^ fan tsao ("all jujubes"). In other editions, fan 

 ("foreign") was perhaps substituted for this fan, so that the existence of the 

 synonyme established by Li and adopted by Bretschneider appears to be very 

 doubtful. 



2 See below, p. 478. 



* It is singular that Bretschneider, who has given a rather uncritical digest of 

 the subject from the Pen ts'ao, does not at all mention this transplantation of the 

 tree. To my mind, this is the most interesting point to be noted. Whether date- 

 palms are still grown in Kwan-tun, I am not prepared to say; but, as foreign authors 

 do not mention the fact, I almost doubt it. 



4 Origin of Cultivated Plants, p. 303. 



6 Pen ts'ao kan mu, Ch. 31, p. 8. 



