18 THE DATE PALM. 



PROPAGATION OF THE DATE PALM. 

 SEEDLING PALMS. 



Date palms may be grown from seed and are generally so grown in 

 Mexico and in India, but if so propagated something over half the 

 palms are males, which produce no fruit whatever, while of the remain- 

 ing female plants probably, on the average, not more than one in ten 

 produces good fruit. This would mean that in planting 100 seeds, 

 on the average only four or five palms bearing good dates would be 

 secured and probably as many more of second quality, or in all some 

 10 per cent of the number planted would yield edible fruit. It should 

 be said that in Arizona, and even in Mexico, very many of the seed- 

 ling sorts do not reach maturity because of the insufficient summer 

 heat; but if grown in the Sal ton Basin, where all the sorts could 

 mature, a larger proportion, possibly 15 per cent, would produce fruit 

 that could be used. 



SEEDLING DATE PALMS FOR THE S ALTON BASIN. 



In view of the scarcity of offshoots of the best varieties and the press- 

 ing need for date palms for many parts of the Salton Basin, it would 

 be well worth while to plant orchards of seedlings, and when they are 

 in bearing the worthless sorts could be cut out and their places gradu- 

 ally filled by taking offshoots from the seedlings yielding good fruit. 

 It would be possible to begin thinning out the excess of males as 

 soon as the flowers begin to show, some four to six years aftei-jplant- 

 ing. The trees could be planted, say, 12 feet apart, in rows 25 feet 

 apart, giving about twice the number that should be left, because 

 nearly half the total number will prove to be males, to be cut away as 

 soon as recognized. By the sixth or seventh year after planting the 

 quality of the fruit produced by the female plants could be judged and 

 the plants producing the poorest dates could be removed and replaced 

 by offshoots from the best seedlings, which should, of course, be planted 

 where the rows show the largest gaps, resulting from the removal of 

 superfluous males and worthless females. In the course of a few years 

 it would be possible to remove all the less valuable seedlings and 

 replace them with the better sorts. This process could go on indefi- 

 nitely by continually replacing poorer sorts with better as fast as off- 

 shoots were available, until only two or three of the best sorts remained. 

 No outlay would be entailed for offshoots, and if considerable numbers 

 of seedlings were grown from the best dates there certainly would be 

 some sorts of value among them. 



If any attempt be made to start seedling date orchards in the Salton 

 Basin it should be borne in mind that the young seedling can not with- 

 stand nearly as much alkali as can offshoots or old palms. Prof. R. H. 

 Forbes a finds that many of the .young plants grown from seeds which 



a Oral communication to the writer, 1902, 



