DATE CULTURE IN ARIZONA. 129 



Phoenix, Ariz. In addition, there are several other seedling varieties 

 of considerable value which have already fruited in central Arizona, 

 some of which may prove adapted to culture on a large scale. 



Two of the varieties introduced from Egypt by the Department of 

 Agriculture in 1890 have been fruiting for some time at Phoenix, Ariz. 

 In 1900 one of the sorts, the Amreeyah, bore over 300 pounds (see 

 Yearbook, 1900, PL LXII, fig. 1), while another, the Seewah, bore 

 over 200 pounds. These dates were packed in half-pound boxes, and 

 Prof. A. J. McClatchie writes that they sold readily for 20 cents a box 

 wholesale and 25 cents retail, and there was a demand in the local mar- 

 ket for ten times the quantity that could be furnished. The Seewah 

 in particular is a very promising date for culture in the Salt River 

 Valley, in Professor McClatchie's opinion, as it is fairly early and of 

 excellent quality. 



Although a good second-class date could doubtless be grown with 

 profit on the best fruit land, it is probable that this culture will be 

 undertaken first on lands too alkaline to be safe for other crops. Some 

 of the low-lying alkali lands, especially near the date garden at Tempe, 

 have water rising to within a few feet of the surface, which seeps down 

 from the surrounding irrigated fields lying at higher levels. Date 

 palms, when once established, will grow in such situations without 

 any irrigation at all, though they will grow better and yield more 

 fruit if occasionally irrigated from the surface with pure water from 

 the canals. 



Colorado River Valley (see fig. 10, p. 102). The valley of the Colo- 

 rado River, lying partly in Arizona and partly in California, comprises 

 two adjoining though different situations where the culture of date 

 palms is possible, viz, the flood-plain of the river and the mesa lands 

 lying above the high-water mark not subject to inundation. 



The immediate flood-plain is flat and only a few feet (10 to 15) above 

 the low-water mark. It is in some places so narrow as to be only a 

 strip along the bank, while below Yuma and again farther north in the 

 Colorado River Indian Reservation, it is often several miles in width 

 and is covered with a luxuriant growth of willows. The flood-plain is 

 subject to annual inundation from the Colorado River, which overflows 

 its banks every year, like the Nile in Egypt, when the summer heat 

 melts the snows on the high mountains at the headwaters of the river 

 in Colorado and Utah. The retiring flood waters leave a thick deposit 

 of mud, which renders the soil exceedingly fertile. a 



In 1899 the writer saw a dense growth of 5 to 6 year old willow trees being cut 

 for cord wood. The trees were 25 to 35 feet in height and from 6 to 10 inches in 

 diameter near the ground. Any possible doubts as to the accuracy of the determina- 

 tion of the age of these trees, which was made by counting the annual rings of growth, 

 were dispelled by the evidence of a woodman, who asserted that some five years 

 before all trees of any considerable size had been cut from this tract of land. 



13529 No. 5304 9 



