16 



THE DATE PALM. 



offshoots, ready to remove, are shown on Plate XVII, figure 2, and 

 offshoots removed and ready to transplant on Plate VI, figure 3. 



Unlike most fruit trees, the date palm has the male and the female 

 flower on separate individuals. If grown from seed, about half of the 

 resulting palms are male and about half female. If such trees be 

 allowed to grow to maturity in this proportion enough pollen is blowr 

 by the wind to fertilize all the flowers properly. It would be, how 

 ever, a very expensive method of culture to irrigate and cultivate suet 

 a large proportion of male trees. The Arabs and before them the 



FIG. 1. A young Deglet Noor date palm at Biskra, Algeria; below a " flower cluster just opening 

 above two young fruit clusters, the larger still bound about with the cord used to- attach the mal 

 flowers in pollinating. May, 1900. (After negative by the writer.) 



Assyrians learned to pollinate the palm artificially, and from a smal 

 proportion of male trees to fertilize the flowers of a very great numbe 

 of female trees. At the present time the proportion followed in com 

 mercial planting is that of about one male tree to a hundred femal< 

 trees. 



The date palm blooms in the early spring, producing from six t< 

 twenty flower clusters, according to the age and vigor of the tree (se< 

 fig. 1). Each flower cluster on the female tree produces a bunch o 



