PHCENIX DACTYLIFERA. Linn. Date palm.
Tamr, Nukhal, . ARAB. Kurjan, Khurma, . PERS. . Bumf. Payr-etchum maram, TAM. Paynd khajur, . DUICH. Kharjurapu chettu, TEL. Khajur, Chuhara, HIND. Perita chettu Khaj, . . . . PANT.
The Fruit.
Rutub, . . . . ARAB. Pind, Chirwi, Bagri, HIND. Tamr (fresh), . „ Bela (dried), . . . „ The Cabbage. The Gum.
Gadda, Galli, . HIND. Hokm-chil, . . .
The Stone.
Usteh-khurma, . ARAB. I Gutla-i-khajur, . . PERS. Tukhm-i-khurma, PERS.
The date tree grows in tropical and Middle Asia, in North Africa, Arabia, and Persia, and in some parts of Northern India. Its northern limit is lat. 35° N. The town of Elche in Spain is sur rounded by a planted forest of 80,000 date palms, and the sale of leaves there and at Alicante for decoration yields a large revenue ; and in the Gulf of Genoa also is a date forest. It is unisexual, grows to a height of 80 to 120 feet, and produces to the age of 100 to 200 years. It is the great support of the Arabs of Yemen ; nineteen-twentieths of the Fezzan population live on dates for nine months of the year, and for many animals it is their sole food, the oases being bare of herbage. The tree will live in saltish soil, and the water for its irrigation may be slightly brackish. One male tree is considered sufficient for fifty female plants, and the pollen dust is sparingly applied by artificial means. Several bunches of flowers are formed in a season, each producing often as many as a hundred dates. In Egypt as many as four cwt. of dates have been harvested in one season from a single date palm. There are many varieties of dates ; those of Gomera contain no seeds. The best dates are produced in oases, where the water is abundant. The Zadie variety produces the heaviest crop, averaging 300 lbs. to the tree ; the better varieties are only obtainable from offshoots of the root. These will commence to bear iu five years, and will be in full bearing in ten years. It was introduced into the Southern Panjab in the 7th or 9th century ; but the true date is nowhere known in any quantity to the north or cant of and Jhang, both close to the Chenab, although the tree has been tried in the districts of Lahore and Amritsar, and there are a few in the northern part of Jalaithar, where, however, the chief use of the tree is for the sweet juice.
It was introduced into Oudh. There are some at Saharunpur, which give good fruit, especially when the rains are late. The natives assert that it will not grow except where the soil is or has been subject to inundation. There are also hundreds of the trees about various towns in Multan and Muzaffargarh, but it is most abundant near Debra Ghazi Khan, Trans-Indus, where the country for ten or twelve miles from north to south has such numbers of trees, that eight or ten thousand rupees are said to be annually got by Government from the small tax which is levied on each female tree, as the sexes are on separate individuals. At Muban there is a bedana seedless) fruit, in which the stone and its kernel are represented only by a little shrivelled mem brane, the rest of the fruit consisting of the pleas ant sweet pulp. Edgeworth states that there is only one tree yielding these, which was formerly reckoned badshahi, royal, i.e. the produce was reserved for the ruler of the country. But several trees produced these, which are the upper fruit ripening after the lower ordinary dates of the same tree. Tho fruit of a female tree is much more valuable than its sugar, and the male tree has but little juice. The terminal bunch of young leaves, taken only when a tree is cut down, is eaten by the natives both raw and cooked. There are at least sixty varieties of dates. The date stones are made into beads ; the leaves are made into couches, baskets, mats, bags, brushes, fly-traps.— Steleares Punjab Plants, p. 245; Seeman on Palms; 31ason's Tenasserim; Roxb. Fl. Ind.; Royle's Fib. Plants; Ainslie, p. 30; Voigt; Von Mueller ; Powell, i. p. 370.