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Phoenix dactylifera
Also called Date, Date Tree, Real Date Palm
In Singapore: Date, Date Palm (Grown in Singapore)
Date palm is a tall, slow-growing palm tree grown for its sweet edible fruit, dates. Its key to success is full sun, heat, and alkaline, well-drained sandy soil, and it usually needs a male and female plant to fruit.
Phoenix dactylifera, commonly known as the date palm, is a flowering-plant species in the palm family Arecaceae, native to the region from the Gulf States and Iraq to Pakistan and India. It is cultivated for its edible sweet fruit called dates. The species is widely cultivated across northern Africa, the Middle East, Australia, South and Southeast Asia, the coastal Mediterranean basin, and Southern California. It is naturalised in many tropical and subtropical regions worldwide. P. dactylifera is the type species of genus Phoenix, which contains 12–19 species of wild date palms.
Date palms reach up to 30 metres (98 ft) in height, growing singly or in clumps with several stems from a single root system. Slow-growing, they can reach over 100 years of age when maintained properly.
Dates are a traditional crop throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Dates (especially Medjool and Deglet Nour) are also cultivated in the southwestern United States, and in Sonora and Baja California in Mexico.
Date palms can take 4 to 8 years after planting before they will bear fruit, and start producing viable yields for commercial harvest between 7 and 10 years. Mature date palms can produce 70–140 kilograms (150–300 pounds) of dates per harvest season. They do not all ripen at the same time so several harvests are required. To obtain fruit of marketable quality, the bunches of dates must be thinned and bagged or covered before ripening so that the remaining fruit grow larger and are protected from weather and animals, such as birds, that also like to eat them.
The place and timeline of origin of the date palm is uncertain because of long cultivation. According to some sources it probably originated from the Fertile Crescent region straddling Egypt and Mesopotamia while others state that they are native to the Persian Gulf area or derived from wild date palm from western India. Fossil records show that the date palm has existed for at least 50 million years.
Deglet noor dates are 21% water, 75% carbohydrates (63% sugars and 8% dietary fibre), 2% protein, and less than 1% fat (table). In a reference amount of 100 grams (3.5 oz), dates supply 1,180 kilojoules (280 kilocalories) of food energy, and are a rich source (20% or more of the Daily Value, DV) of potassium (22% DV) and a moderate source of pantothenic acid, vitamin B6, and the dietary minerals magnesium and manganese (10–19% DV), with other micronutrients in low amounts (table). The primary carbohydrates are monosaccharides – glucose (20%), fructose (20%), and sucrose (24%) (table).
Cape Verde Island Date Palm · Canary Island date palm · Mangrove date palm · Senegal date palm · Dwarf Date Palm · Cliff date palm · Wild date palm · Date palm
[Contains information from Leaf Area Index (LAI) and Heritage Trees from data.gov.sg (National Parks Board), made available under the terms of the Singapore Open Data Licence version 1.0]
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Date palm by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
