PROPAGATION BY SEED 85 



because a palm grown from seed sometimes bears 

 bad fruit during the first few years and afterwards 

 improves in quality — a characteristic that applies 

 also to a few varieties of offshoot-propagated palms, 

 and particularly to Manakhir in the United States. 

 As rapidly as he decides that a palm has no merit, he 

 will throw it out and put in its place an offshoot from 

 one of his better females; and this process he will 

 have to continue indefinitely, if he wishes ever to get 

 a really valuable commercial plantation. So when the 

 seedling grower finally gets a good grove of palms, 

 he will have to admit that it is not really a seedling 

 grove, but preponderatingly an offshoot grove. 



It is difficult to quote any figures as to the 

 percentage of good seedlings in one hundred female 

 trees, for the number will vary according to condi- 

 tions, and no figures quoted are safe from attack by 

 someone who can show that in his own experience they 

 are inaccurate. Most students* consider that one- 

 tenth of the females will bear fairly good fruit and 

 another tenth passable fruit: that is, from one 

 hundred seeds (including males) one would get ten 

 females which would produce eatable dates. In 

 favored localities the number would be a little higher, 

 but the commercial disadvantage always remains that 

 even the good dates are too varied to be graded and 

 packed as a uniform product, and therefore can not 

 command the top market price. For home use, 

 where it makes no difference whether the dates are 

 uniform or not, seedling fruit may be quite as good 

 as that grown from offshoots. 



There remains always the attractive possibility 

 that the seedling grower will draw a capital prize — 



*e. g.. Swingle and Milne. 



