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Plant · P-514
Date Palm
Phoenix dactylifera
Date Palm is a desert palm grown above all for its fruit - eaten fresh, cooked or dried, or worked into bread and confectionery - along with edible male flowers, pollen, and a sap drunk fresh, fermented into toddy or distilled into arrack. It needs a long, hot, dry season to ripen a crop; rain or humidity while the fruit is ripening spoils it, which is why the crop belongs to desert oases rather than wet subtropics. It is dioecious, so pollination is usually done by hand, and a mature palm can carry 50 to 70 kg of dates a year.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 9–11
- Soil
- Sand · Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Dry · Well-Drained · Moderate · Moist
Vertical layer
Canopy- Soil pH
- 6–8.5
- Plant type
- Evergreen Tree
- Mature height
- 50–100 ft
- Mature spread
- 20–50 ft
- Plant spacing
- 20–40 ft
- Root type
- Fibrous-deep
- Spread pattern
- Both
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The deeper layer
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- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
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- Byproduct
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Behind the record
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