Date Palm

desert plants · food crops · middle east

Grows in deserts. Date palms thrive in hot, dry places from the Middle East to North Africa, and they can survive where most other plants would wilt and give up.

Sweet sticky fruits. Each date palm produces bunches of small, wrinkled brown fruits called dates that taste like honey and are packed with natural sweetness.

Spread around the world. People have grown date palms for thousands of years across Africa, Asia, Europe, and even in sunny parts of America because the fruit lasts forever when dried.

Everything gets used. People eat the dates, use the wood for building, make rope from the leaves, and even feed the leftovers to animals, so almost nothing on the tree goes to waste.

One type of many. The date palm (Phoenix dactylifera) is the most famous type, but there are actually 12 to 19 different wild date palm cousins growing in nature.