Palm Sunday

On the next day, when the great crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, they took palm branches and went out to meet him, and cried out: "Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, the king of Israel."
~ John 12: 12–13


Date Palm
Phoenix dactylifera

The Date Palm is a palm extensively cultivated for its edible fruit. Due to its long history of cultivation for fruit, its exact native distribution is unknown, but probably originated somewhere in the desert oases of northern Africa, and perhaps also southwest Asia. It is a medium-sized tree, 15–25 m tall, often clumped with several trunks from a single root system, but often growing singly as well. The leaves are pinnate, 3–5 m long, with spines on the petiole and about 150 leaflets; the leaflets are 30 cm long and 2 cm broad. The full span of the crown ranges from 6–10 m.

History of dates
Dates have been a staple food of the Middle East for thousands of years. They are believed to have originated around the Persian Gulf, and have been cultivated since ancient times from Mesopotamia to prehistoric Egypt, possibly as early as 4000 BC. There is archaeological evidence of date cultivation in eastern Arabia in 6,000 BC. In later times, Arabs spread dates around South and South East Asia, northern Africa, and Spain. Dates were introduced into Mexico and California by the Spaniards by 1765, around Mission San Ignacio.


Photo of Phoenix dactylifera from Murcia, Spain by Seweryn Olkowicz from Wikimedia Commons. Text from Wikipedia.