THE DATE PALM.
The Arab may well claim that the best palm in all the world is his beautiful, feathery-leaved, desert-loving date palm, the palm of the Bible, and of ancient history in many languages. The hot sun only sweetens and dries the great clusters of dates, that feed the family, the camels, the horses, and the dogs. Wherever the Arab emi grant has gone, the date palm has followed, and become the dooryard tree, as it is at home. The meanest surroundings, the poorest soil, do not discourage the wonderful plant. Where there is sufficient water it grows, and makes a grateful shade, and abundant food for the traveller. The desert of Sahara would not have been threaded by highways of oriental commerce in the past centuries except that date palms grew at the scattered oases, and furnished cheer for the weary caravans.
We can understand the jealous feeling that led the crafty Arabs of Asia Minor and Tunis to cheat the clever and energetic American horticulturists with seeds of inferior seedling varieties when the effort was first made to establish date culture in the hot regions of this country. The date palm does not come true from seed, and of seedling trees, but one in a great host can be expected to be a fruit of any merit. So progress has been slow, and discouragements many in the few spots adapted to successful date culture in America. At last suckers of good varieties have been obtained from dependable sources in the best date-growing regions of North Africa and Arabia, and we are at last getting home-grown dates from trees in the torrid Imperial Valley of southern California, from Yuma, Arizona, and other points, where the work of the Government Plant Intro duction Bureau was first successful.
One thing the Arabs discovered long ago: the staminate, or male trees, are barren, and the pistillate, or female trees, require to be fertilized, or they, too, are barren, though they blossom luxuriantly. It is a simple thing to cut a cluster of the pollen-loaded staminate flowers, and shake them over the pistillate clusters in the other trees. One pollen-bearing tree among twenty-five fertile ones will supply all the pollen needed. And the sex of a tree can be relied upon at the setting out of a new orchard. Cuttings, or suckers, reproduce their parent trees. Suckers from bearing trees will bear when half a dozen years old, or even younger. Many a tree stands alone in a garden, blossoms freely, then ripens no fruit; it lacks the fertilization. Without pollen no fruit can be pro duced.
The beginning of work looking toward the development of date-growing in this country was made in 1891. Already it is demonstrated a suc cess. Time will bring the increase. We are even now growing dates that excite the envy of the old Arabian growers, for we have Science, the great Magician, helping us.