Note 3 — Chapter XII
Reading edition
The following is the process mentioned by Shaw.—“In the months of March or April, when the sheaths that respectively enclose the young clusters of the male flowers and the female fruit begin to open (at which time the latter are formed and the first are mealy), they take a sprig or two of the male cluster, and insert it into the sheath of the female; or else they take a whole cluster of the male tree, and sprinkle the meal, or farina of it over several clusters of the female.” (Travels in Barbary, vol. i., p. 259-60).
The same author remarks that the palm-tree arrives at its greatest vigour about thirty years after transplantation, and continues so seventy years afterwards; bearing yearly fifteen or twenty clusters of dates, each of them weighing fifteen or twenty pounds[a].
“Si parmi les palmiers (says the author of a treatise on agriculture quoted by Kazwini, in the words of Silvestre de Sacy), “Si parmi les palmiers on rapproche les individus mâles des individus femelles, ces derniers portent des fruits en plus grande abondance, parceque le voisinage favorise leurs amours; et si, au contraire, on éloigne l’arbre femelle des mâles, cette distance empêche qui’il ne rapporte aucun fruit. Quand on plante un palmier mâle au milieu des femelles, et que, le vent venant à souffler, les femelles reçoivent l’odeur des fleurs du mâle, cette odeur suffit pour rendre féconds tous les palmiers femelles qui environnent le mâle.”