18 BULLETIN 271, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
throughout, with a thickness of 0.017 to 0.020 ofa aninch. The pulvini are from medium 
to heavy, a few being slenderly caudate and coalescent. 
The diversity of the angles of the pinnez gives a rather ragged appearance to the 
blade, and the position of the antrorse class keeps the valley of the blade rather narrow 
clear to the apex, asomewhat unusugl feature. The analysis shows unusually low 
numbers of introrse pinne and a corresponding high proportion of the paired antrorse- 
retrorse groups. 
The fruit stalks are of medium weight, about 36 to 40 inches to the fruiting head, 
which is 12 to 15 inches. The strands, or ‘“‘shamrokh,”’ 18 to 22 inches long, are set 
with fruit on the outer three-fifths of their length. 
The oval fruits are 14 to 14 inches long and about three-fourths of an inch hear 
the broadest portion being a little beyond the middle. 
The color is orange yellow, curing to a brownish black, the packed color being an 
oily black for which there is no equivalent in the color scheme. The skin is thin 
and the flesh sticky and of a color difficult to place in the scale, a “‘maroon purple” 
(R. X XVI)! much deepened being the nearest equivalent. The flavor is rich and 
very sweet, but rather cloying. 
The seeds are about three-fourths of an inch long, five-sixteenths of an inch broad, 
- nearly oblong, with rounded ends, the apex obtusely pointed. They are nearly cylin- 
drical, smooth dorsally, the germ pore placed a little nearer the apex, the ventral 
surface somewhat corrugated, the ventral furrow narrow and shallow. Their color 
is very close to “‘avburn” (R. II). 
This variety is gathered before it is fully ripe and dried somewhat in the sun, spread 
_on palm leaves in drying yards. The dates are then tramped into huge baskets of 
braided date leaves, holding from an ardeb of 320 pounds to 600 or even 752 pounds. 
While this is a date of rather valuable qualities, certainly much superior to the Amri 
in flavor, it is handled in such a careless and filthy manner, which filthiness is en- 
hanced by the stickiness of the fruit, that the whole product is a dirty, sticky mass 
that finds a sale among the poorer people at prices considerably below those commanded 
for the Siwah of the same district. 
The chief area of the production of this variety is in Gizeh Province, in the dis- 
tricts around Bedrashen, Hauamdiyeh, and Abu Nemrus. There is also a consid- 
erable planting about Manshia, north of the Gizeh Pyramids. 
AMRI. 
(Notes taken at Salihieh and Birket el Hadji.) 
Trees of the Amri variety (Pl. [NCE fig. 1) have unusually airy and feathery tops, an 
appearance due both to the slender, flexible rib and to the narrow pinne. 
The leaves are 11 to 12 feet long, the rib light throughout, narrow and strongly 
rounded at the base and tapering to a slender apex, which becomes very thin laterally. 
The light ribs are counted of small value in the manuiacture of crates and other mate- 
rial of that character. 
The spine area is only about 15 inches, the spines from 2 to 6 or 7 inches long, slen- 
der and acute. They pass into soft ribbon pinnz varying from 10 to 16 or 18 inches 
in length. The normal pinne become 22 to 23 inches long at 4 or 5 feet irom the 
base and gradually diminish to 10 or 12 inches at the apex. 
Through the middle of the blade the pinne reach a breadth of only seven-eighths 
of an inch or 1 inch, while the upper and lower ones are from one-hali to three-fourths 
of an inch broad. Several of the lower pinne are somewhat ‘‘necked,”’ as is com- 
mon in Hayany, and the apical pinne are noticeably winged. 
1 The color references in this and the following descriptions are from Ridgway’s “Color Standards and 
Nomenclature,’’ Washington, D. C., 1912. Published by the author. The color cited, ‘maroon purple,” 
is quoted from Ridgway’s plate 26, being indicated by “R. X XVI.” 
