Date Palms

When I was little, the house my parents rented had a citrus orchard behind it with mostly grapefruit, but other trees lived there too. Each tree had its own personality. In the far corner of the orchard stood a date palm, the tallest of all the trees in the orchard. It was so tall, we could not reach the dates.

We could see the blossoms as they formed, and the ripening fruit shining like jewels in the sun, but could not ever taste them until they became overripe and fell to the ground.


The ground around the roots of the palm tree was littered with fallen fronds, leaves, pieces of bark and overripe fruit saturated with sticky sweet syrup that had dripped from the overripe fruit prior to its fall from the tree. In the hot Arizona sun the date syrup cooked and dried until it turned to amber sugar crystals.

Of course, ants, bees and other sweet loving animals always were around this tree in large numbers.