LI 
DATE GROVES 
I SN'T IT ODD that one date tree may be a male and 
bear no fruit, while another is a female and, by pro¬ 
ducing seeds in fruit, bears children to carry on the race! 
When Westerners first thought of growing dates instead 
of bringing them all the way from Arabia, they planted 
seeds and waited for them to develop into trees. No dif¬ 
ference in the plants appeared until they were old enough 
to bloom. Then, strangely, half of them put forth one 
sort of bloom, and half another. It was found that those 
with the modest little buds with almost no petals were on 
female trees, and the more ambitious blooms were on 
male trees. The female flowers bore fruit, and the male 
flowers did not. 
These male trees, since they bore no fruit, seemed to 
take up much room which yielded no profit. It seemed 
logical that they should all be cut down and female trees 
put in their places. Where this was done, however, an¬ 
other curious situation arose. The female trees at once 
ceased to bear fruit. 
The date-growers, knowing something of the secrets of 
the plant world, realized that the blooms of the female 
trees must be fertilized with pollen from the male trees 
or they would not bear fruit. In spite of the fact that 
they yielded no fruit, male trees must be grown in date 
orchards. The problem to work out was that of keeping 
enough of them to fertilize the fruit-bearers without at 
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