DATE GROVES 
the same time giving more space in the orchard to them 
than was necessary. 
Where these trees grow in the native state, with an 
equal number of male and female trees, the male blossoms 
shake out their pollen, which floats on the wind in such 
quantities that some of it reaches every female flower. 
The problem was to reduce the number of male trees as 
much as possible and still have enough pollen to go 
around. 
The manner in which this could be done had been 
worked out five thousand years earlier by the Arabs, 
which shows that something was known of natural his¬ 
tory even as long ago at that. The practice in the various 
countries had been to plant one male tree to every fifty 
or one hundred female trees. Date flowers appear in 
groups much like tassels of corn. There are many sprigs 
to a single tassel. 
The Arabs divided these tassels up into individual 
twigs. Then they would climb the productive trees and 
tie one of these sprigs to each opening cluster of female 
blooms. This sprig, bound in this way closely to the 
female cluster, would thoroughly fertilize it. Wherever 
dates are grown commercially, such twigs are carried to 
the clusters of productive flowers. 
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