50 BULLETIN 1457, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
USE OF OLD POLLEN 
The opinion is prevalent in Egypt that date pollen may be car- 
ried over and used successfully the following year. A Ramleh 
gardener stated that pollen flowers to be kept over should be dried 
in the sun, put away in a tight box or closet, and " must not after- 
wards see the light of the sun or moon." Treated in this way, he 
said, " pollen would keep good for a year." 
Testimony as to the value of old pollen in America is so contra- 
dictory that the field is still open to further experimentation. Stout 
(19), in testing the viability of many samples of date pollen on agar- 
sugar culture media, has so far failed to record a single instance of 
germination of pollen a year old, yet some careful growers in the 
Coachella Valley insist that they have obtained good commercial 
setting of fruit with the use of stored pollen of the previous year. 
HARVESTING AND PACKING 
Date harvesting in Lower Egypt differs from that in Upper Egypt 
or Algeria because the larger part of the dates produced are of 
varieties consumed in the rutab state. 
HARVESTING THE HAYANY DATE 
The Hayany is the chief date of Lower Egypt, from the coastal 
dunes to the margin of the Delta bordering the desert near Cairo. 
The earliest fruit reaches the rutab stage in the vicinity of the 
village of Birket el Haggi, closely bordering the desert, 10 miles 
northeast of Cairo, in the latter part of August. Still hard and 
brittle and retaining fully its beautiful pure carmine color, it is 
juicy and pleasantly sweet as a joint of sugar cane. In this condi- 
tion the dates are stripped from the strands and shipped in bulk in 
small crates or in braided pinna baskets to Cairo, Alexandria, and 
all parts of the densely populated Delta. 
The output could be estimated in thousands of tons. Some of the 
larger plantations near El Marg are equipped with light railways. 
Over these the crop is brought to the steam road in little cars drawn 
by donkeys or by diminutive plantation engines. 
Even more important than prompt pollination is the getting of 
this rutab fruit to the consumer before it begins to brown and soften, 
for a worse gaumed-up mess is hard to imagine than a bushel mass 
of these dates after softening has set in. The tree climber, with his 
trusty climbing girdle and rope — every cord hand twisted and tested, 
for on it his life depends — is veritably the man of the hour (pi. 8, A). 
As the early Hayany dates from the El Marg district go off the 
market they are followed by those of later localities, till finally the 
coast-dune dates of the Ramleh and Rosetta districts reach the 
bazaars about November, thus keeping this favorite date before the 
consumer for fully 100 days. 
Kobi, Bint Aischa, Zagloul, and Samany are other rutab dates of 
the coast region which are produced in limited quantities, the two 
latter sometimes holding out into March. 
