Date palm

The date palm is a tree. It has been cultivated for a very long time because of its fruit. The tree is between 15 and 25 m high. It has long leaves that look like feathers. Such leaves are called pinnate. The leaves can grow to 3 to 5 m in length. The leaves have visible spines. There are about 150 leaflets. Each leaflet can be up to 30 cm in length and 2 cm in breadth. The full span of the crown of the tree is 6 to 10 m.

The tree has one or more trunks. All the trunks come from a single system of roots.

Production
World production of dates was approximately 6.7 Mio tonnes in 2004 (FAO statistics). The major producers are: The First International Date Conference was held in Tripoli in 1959. In that conference, it was decided to develop a special program under the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations to promote the commercial use of substandard or physically defective dates.
 * Egypt: 1,100,000 t (16.2% of world production)
 * Iran: 880,000 t (13.0%)
 * Saudi Arabia: 830,000 t (12.3%)
 * United Arab Emirates: 760,000 t (11.2%)
 * India: 710,000 t (10.6%)
 * Pakistan: 650,000 t (9.6%)
 * Algeria: 450,000 t (6.6%)
 * Sudan: 330,000 t
 * Oman: 240,000 t
 * Libya: 140,000 t
 * Tunisia: 150,500 t
 * Others: 1,140,000 t
 * Iraq used to be a major producer of dates but in recent years production and exports have fallen considerably.
 * Kuwait