Mary Allen
The date is the fruit of the date palm. They are a little elongated, like the phalanx of a finger. They can be three to seven centimeters long and have a hardcore. That’s where her name comes from: the Greek word “dactylus” means finger.
You can eat dates just like that. The Arabs like to fill them with almonds, lemon zest, marzipan or other things. Dried dates keep well. The syrup is also made from dates and used to sweeten foods instead of sugar or honey. Dates are very sweet because they are four-fifths sugar.
Dates are mainly grown in North Africa and Arabia. Most dates in the world come from Egypt. Dates need a lot of heat, but they also tolerate cold nights. They need a lot of water, especially in summer. But it doesn’t necessarily need rain for that. In the oases, the groundwater is sufficient because the date palms have very deep roots.
There are male and female date palms. For every 100 female palms, only two to three males are needed. A worker then climbs up the trunk of a male plant and retrieves a clump of pollen. He then climbs many female plants and fertilizes their flowers by shaking out the pollen fronds. As a result, a plantation brings much more yield.
Date palms grow up to 20 meters high. Many things can be made from the parts of the date palm: boats from the leaves, lumber from the trunk, and so on. In biology, date palms are a genus of plants. There are 14 types. But only one of them supplies such good dates, namely the “true date palm”. People have bred different varieties of her.