Date palm with fruit
When I was young, we used to drive from my home in San Diego to visit my grandparents in Blythe, California on the Colorado River, on the border of California and Arizona. On the way we usually stopped in Indio at a date farm and purchased some of the glossy brown, sweet fruit. I remember wandering through the rows of huge trees, towering into the sky.
Most of the time, memories from childhood are distorted, but in this case I’m quite sure they aren’t. Date palm trees are really extraordinarily tall.
Group of twelve palm trees lined across the horizon in the Colorado Desert, northeast of Palm Springs near Indio, ca.1904
Over a century ago date palms were transplanted from the Middle East to Indio. Dates were very popular in Europe at the time, but not in America, since they couldn’t be brought here without rotting. Someone decided to import the palms and the rest as they say, is history. Today, the Coachella Valley produces about 95% of the dates consumed in the United States.
Dates and the palms they come from are mentioned many times in my books. They’re a staple food in the Middle East today and have been for centuries. The Israelites most likely ate them along with their manna. Date palms probably originated from the area around Iraq, and were cultivated in Egypt as early as 4000 BC, and in Arabia around 6000 BC.
The trees grow typically 70–75 feet tall; the Medjool variety can grow to 100 feet tall. Leaves are 13-20 feet long and the crown can be 20-40 feet across. The palms are either male or female, and only the female bears fruit. In nature they are pollinated by the wind, but on farms today they are pollinated entirely by hand. Farmers may keep only a few males (sometimes none at all), as one male can pollinate up to 100 females.
Fresh Dates
The trees can bear some fruit when as little as 5 feet tall. Dates are about 1 inch long and can be bright red to bright yellow, but are usually some shade of brown. There is a stone in the center. They can be eaten as picked, pitted and stuffed, dried and glazed, or chopped and used in recipes, usually a dessert since they are so sweet.
Dates are 80% sugar. They can be turned into date powder, date sugar, a vinegar or wine. Several studies show that eating dates in the last four weeks of pregnancy leads to shorter and easier labor.
It takes 4 to 8 years for a tree to bear fruit, but once it does it can produce 150 to 300 lbs per season. Since the dates ripen at different times, one tree requires several harvests.
Dates are mentioned 50 times in Bible. It is generally thought that the “honey” in the land of milk and honey refers to date honey, not bee honey.