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Post by castanea on Oct 27, 2012 12:40:15 GMT -5
Do we have anyone here who grows date palms?
I'm pretty sure we don't, because they require such a speciifc environment for fruiting, but you never know.
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Post by samyaza on Oct 27, 2012 16:52:57 GMT -5
Why not ? Until zone 8, but it's dioecious and need a long, hot season to mature. A lot of water is better but it can bear drought pretty well. Try it in California or Australia !
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Post by atash on Oct 28, 2012 1:13:20 GMT -5
Castanea could grow them but not ripen them. They are cultivate in Southern California but they grow the wrong kind--deglet noors--I prefer the plumper, moister medjools.
They do recover from severe freezes IF they are well-established, but need a lot of heat units to survive.
Two oddest places I have ever seen photos of them are on the coast of Scotland in front of a castle on a coastline swept by the Gulf Stream, and on the east side of the south island of New Zealand where the weather is sunny enough and the frosts brief enough for them to survive a climate that would otherwise seem too cold. The ones in NZ are probably Canary Island Date Palms, probably not good fruit. Those are the ones common in the central valley of California. Phoenix dactylifera is rarer but surely does exist in northern California.
Castanea, try Jelly Palms instead. Perfectly hardy in your part of the world (actually, they're hardy up here!! But surely not enough heat units to ripen fruit). Fruit said to be delicious. Butia capitata or maybe B. odorata which might be what they call the southern form.
Jubaea chilensis is a rare item in northern California gardens--it's the one with the HUGE base. The seeds are eaten in Chile as "Coquitos". Also quite hardy. Arboretum here had one until someone wantonly destroyed it. Several other Chilean natives destroyed in the same raid.
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Post by ilex on Oct 28, 2012 3:00:51 GMT -5
I've got date palms, low quality as they were seed planted. Palms are very hardy, but require lots of heat to rippen. They are marginal here and only fruit in best places. So you get an idea we grow orange trees and can mature bananas. There's a street that planted palms from Tunisia, wonderful dates in some of them. They are pruned early so they don't mess up. I'm always temped to go at night to pick a bunch, but they are now treated for Rhynchophorus ferrugineus with potent poisons.
Canary Island Date Palms have their uses, but raw eating is not one of them.
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Post by steev on Oct 28, 2012 23:22:34 GMT -5
Here in NorCal, Canary Island date palms produce fruit that can be sweet, but virtually nothing but skin and seed. However, I once had to cut one down, which was only house-high (it needed to go because it was right by the foundation); it's inner tissue was crunchy and tasty like celery root, so we all ate as much as we could stand. Thoughtlessly, I failed to hose off my chainsaw before putting it away in it's case. Turned out the palm juice had lots of sugar which fermented into enough acid to destroy the body of my chainsaw.
Washington palms produce no edible fruit, but are often seen here along old roads and by old homes, having been fashionable in the early 20th century.
Oakland's Lake Merritt Park has a palmyry containing a sizable collection of species, a little-known attraction.
Just south of Palm Springs, there is a palm plantation which produces at least six varieties of edible dates, five of which are delicious, while the sixth ("bread" dates) is said to be useful for stimulating saliva when one is parched (I think sucking a pebble is as useful and perhaps as tasty).
As to the cold-hardiness of palms, I recall one year when we had a week of uncommonly freezing weather (for Oakland); when things warmed up to normal Winter cold, I saw a Canary Island palm (~40' tall) which had clearly frozen to death and, upon thawing, collapsed. One third was vertical up, the middle third was vertical down, and the top third was horizontal on the ground. Looked like an ad for Viagra.
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Post by atash on Oct 29, 2012 13:52:58 GMT -5
Steev, was the dead tree in Oakland? It might not have been getting enough heat. In the central valley they survive worse freezes that you are likely to get in Oakland and live to very ripe old ages. You can see trees over 400 years old in parts of Spain that see snow from time to time--and must have seen severe temperatures in their lifetimes.
Hot, dry climates help their tissues harden.
If you look on a globe, and pinpoint where Phoenixes are native, they run along a line from the Canary Islands, northern Africa (the ones in southern Europe got there with human help, except for one very rare native), the warmer end of the Middle East, India, and into Southeast Asia. There are outliers in tropical and southern Africa. The rest seem to be survivors of what used to be a single species that has died back to a few relicts. The creation of the Sahara desert probably wiped out vast tracts of their habitat; they survive in oasis to which they are beautifully adapted. The whole family is generally in decline; they're lousy seed-dispersers. Just drop their seeds right under themselves. The only exceptions are the ones that offer fruit to something that shows an interest in it, or the Coconut Palm has spread abundantly partially with human help, partially due to surviving on ocean currents and being tolerant of beach conditions. Washingtonias have spread abundantly in historical times, with human help. Supposedly coyotes now help spread them too. Went from near extinct to being on weed lists worldwide.
Humans rescued the Date Palm and spread it all over the drier tropics and subtropics. Humans also spread the Canary Island Date palm around as an ornamental. Most of the rest of the genus still uncommon though you see a few rarer species in California.
There is a species native to Crete that has been tried up here (Phoenix theophrasti), and there is a species native to the foothills of the Himalaya in India, Phoenix sylvestris, but I don't think they are sufficiently cooler-growing than any other to be viable outside of traditional date palm climates. They might perform better in the Bay Area than the Canary Island Date but that's just relative.
Better choices for coastal California are various species from the southern Pacific such as Rhopalostylis sapida, the Nikau palm from New Zealand. Trachycarpus--most of the species--probably a good bet. Chamaedorea radicalis would probably thrive in sheltered niches; it grows beautifully up here.
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Post by steev on Oct 29, 2012 20:19:09 GMT -5
Yes, that dead palm was in Oakland, and it certainly was heat-deficient that December week; the tree collapsed a couple weeks later; only time I've seen a palm die like that. That was a very uncommon cold spell; by the end, there was 1/2" ice in my sunken stock-trough pond. I think what got the palm was that it just stayed cold/got colder for a whole week.
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Post by castanea on Oct 29, 2012 22:41:50 GMT -5
That's interesting about the edibility of the core of the canary island date palms. You can find them naturalizing all over the Sacramento area.
You can find true date palms used as ornamentals all over central and southern California and the desert southwest. They are usually purchased as mature trees from date farms. When the trees get older and taller the production peaks or goes down hill and they are harder to harvest and pollenize, so the date farms make good money selling them as ornamentals. But about 90% of the palms are female so you they often don't fruit well when placed as ornamentals. Additionally, many property managers cut the lower palm leaves off and leave the newer ones which gives a more "stylish" look to the palm, but leaves it without the energy to set fruit.
Here in the Sacramento area most date palmsthat have not been trimmed too much will set fruit from September to December but won't mature because it is too cool at that time of year. There used to be a doctor in Auburn who had about a half dozen different varieties of date palms and was trying to get the fruit to mature. In some of our longer hotter summers he might have been successful. Unfortunately he passed away a few years after he got started. The plants are very hardy here, and grow well, but just won't mature fruit.
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Post by castanea on Oct 29, 2012 23:46:53 GMT -5
I've got date palms, low quality as they were seed planted. Palms are very hardy, but require lots of heat to rippen. They are marginal here and only fruit in best places. So you get an idea we grow orange trees and can mature bananas. There's a street that planted palms from Tunisia, wonderful dates in some of them. They are pruned early so they don't mess up. I'm always temped to go at night to pick a bunch, but they are now treated for Rhynchophorus ferrugineus with potent poisons. Canary Island Date Palms have their uses, but raw eating is not one of them. What was the seed source for your date palms? Most California date farms use imported varieies from Africa or the middle east but some have also planted seedlings. There are two smaller date farms that have two excellent seedlings- Pato's Dream Dates has a seedling called Tarbarzal that is excellent while Flying Disc Date Ranch has a superb seedling called Cire.
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Post by ilex on Oct 30, 2012 4:45:36 GMT -5
I've got date palms, low quality as they were seed planted. Palms are very hardy, but require lots of heat to rippen. They are marginal here and only fruit in best places. So you get an idea we grow orange trees and can mature bananas. There's a street that planted palms from Tunisia, wonderful dates in some of them. They are pruned early so they don't mess up. I'm always temped to go at night to pick a bunch, but they are now treated for Rhynchophorus ferrugineus with potent poisons. Canary Island Date Palms have their uses, but raw eating is not one of them. What was the seed source for your date palms? Most California date farms use imported varieies from Africa or the middle east but some have also planted seedlings. There are two smaller date farms that have two excellent seedlings- Pato's Dream Dates has a seedling called Tarbarzal that is excellent while Flying Disc Date Ranch has a superb seedling called Cire. Who knows, my granpa planted them. At that time, they probably came from Elche ( Palmeral de Elche) We also have Chamaerops humilis, which is edible, plus the mega rare Phoenix iberica (genetic studies should come up at any moment). Or they could come from local palms (there was a small palmeral around here). Indians used to eat Washingtonia fruits, not much meat but very productive. From Canary Island palms, you can produce guarapo, which was used as a sugar subsitute.
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Post by atash on Oct 30, 2012 12:24:33 GMT -5
Castanea, those improved seedlings would be valuable for the dry tropics where commercial fruit production is rare. Lousy crop for eating straight--too much sugar!! More like candy than "fruit". But you can dry the dates and semi-powder them, the resulting "date sugar" being up to about 85% sugar, probably sucrose. Probably more wholesome than high-fructose corn syrup.
You can also bake the dates instead of dehydrating them at lower temperatures, in which case the date sugar slightly carmelizes. Either way the resulting product has a more complex and interesting flavor than straight sugar.
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Post by richardw on Oct 30, 2012 14:21:25 GMT -5
Two oddest places I have ever seen photos of them are on the coast of Scotland in front of a castle on a coastline swept by the Gulf Stream, and on the east side of the south island of New Zealand where the weather is sunny enough and the frosts brief enough for them to survive a climate that would otherwise seem too cold. The ones in NZ are probably Canary Island Date Palms, probably not good fruit. Those are the ones common in the central valley of California. Phoenix dactylifera is rarer but surely does exist in northern California. Yes,a gardening friend who's only a few km away from here has that type growing(still young yet),this last winter we had by our standards one heavy frost of -14C, 6.8F and it seemed to handle it fine,
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Post by castanea on Oct 30, 2012 21:26:47 GMT -5
Castanea, those improved seedlings would be valuable for the dry tropics where commercial fruit production is rare. Lousy crop for eating straight--too much sugar!! More like candy than "fruit". But you can dry the dates and semi-powder them, the resulting "date sugar" being up to about 85% sugar, probably sucrose. Probably more wholesome than high-fructose corn syrup. You can also bake the dates instead of dehydrating them at lower temperatures, in which case the date sugar slightly carmelizes. Either way the resulting product has a more complex and interesting flavor than straight sugar. The sugar levels are astronomical, possibly the highest of all fruits (40-60% by weight), but sugar composition varies from one variety to another, containing primarily glucose, fructose and sucrose, in widely varying ratios, but also maltose and mannose in smaller quantities. If I eat Medjools, I can only eat one or two because I can't tolerate the sugar. If I eat Khadrawi, I can eat a dozen or so with no problem. Medjools are very high in sucrose while Khadrawi has little or no sucrose.
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Post by castanea on Oct 30, 2012 21:28:32 GMT -5
Who knows, my granpa planted them. At that time, they probably came from Elche ( Palmeral de Elche) We also have Chamaerops humilis, which is edible, plus the mega rare Phoenix iberica (genetic studies should come up at any moment). Or they could come from local palms (there was a small palmeral around here). Indians used to eat Washingtonia fruits, not much meat but very productive. From Canary Island palms, you can produce guarapo, which was used as a sugar subsitute. How do you produce guarapo?
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Post by ilex on Oct 31, 2012 4:03:15 GMT -5
From Canary Island palms, you can produce guarapo, which was used as a sugar subsitute. How do you produce guarapo?[/quote] Photos and information, looks laborious and a bit tricky to avoid killing the palm: Guarapo (Spanish) I imagine you must let the palm rest for quite a few years after that. Guess they could also eat the part of the palmito they cut away. In other parts of the world, people take all the palmito killing the palm.
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