The Journal of Heredity 



THE DATE PAL.M AMONG THE ASSYRIANS 



Design from the palace of Sargon at Khorsabad (eighth century B. C.) showing that the male 

 and female flowers of the date palm were clearly distinguished at that time. The worshiper 

 in the middle is carrying a sprig of male or staminale flowers wliile the one at the right 

 bears female or pistillate Vjlossoms. The drawings should be compared with the photo- 

 graphs of actual flowers in fig. 2. The winged deity at the left, who is usually identified 

 as the Palm God, holds in his hand a cone which is thoueht to typify the spathe of the male 

 palm, and thus the princijjle of fertility in general. (Fig. 1.) 



peoples cultivaliri}^ unisexual jjlants for 

 food. The existence of fertile and sterile 

 trees of the date palm, e. g., was known 

 to the peoples of Ej^ypt and Mesopo- 

 tamia from the earliest times. Records 

 of the cultivation of these trees and of 

 artificial pollination have come down to 

 us on bas-reliefs from before 700 B.C. 

 found in the palace of Sar^on at Khorsa- 

 bad (Haupt and Toy, 1899).= The 

 Assyrians, it is said, commonly referred 

 to the two date trees as male and 

 female (Rawlinson, 1866). The Greeks, 

 in spite of their peculiarly keen interest 

 in natural phencjmcna, failed to offer 

 any definite inter];retation of this well- 

 known fact concerning,' the date ]Kilm. 

 Aristotle and Thcoi)hrastus rejjort the 

 fact, ^\'iined ap])arc'ntly from the aj^'ri- 

 culturalists anfl herlj-Katherers, that 



*The dates in parentheses throughout this i)aper indicate the time each discovery w;us pub 

 lished and also refer directly to the pap.-rs 1 istid in the bibli(.graj)hy apinnded to this paper as 

 I)ublished in Science. 



some trees of the date, fig and terebinth 

 bear no fruit themselves, but in some 

 way aid the fertile tree in perfecting its 

 fruit. But without recording a single 

 crucial ex])eriment on the matter, 

 Theophrastus concltides that this can 

 not be a real sexuality, since this 

 ])hc'n()nK'n()n is found in so few j^lants. 



i;.\KLV GfESSES. 



In this uncertain state the knowledge 

 of sexuality in plants was destined to 

 rest for 20 centuries, waiting for the 

 exi3erimental genius of Camerarius to 

 gi\'e a conclusive answer to the question 

 raised by the Assyrian and Greek 

 gardeners and answered wrongly by 

 Theophrastus. The English i)hysician 

 Grew (1676) did, it is trtie, accej)! and 

 expand the suggestion of Sir Thomas 



