Interesting Facts About
The Trees That Produce the Nuts and Fruits for Almondjool

The Deglet Noor is the most popular date in the United States and Europe and is a delicious semidry variety, delicate in flavor. It originally came from Algeria and was brought to the United States by the Spanish missionaries  
  The Deglet Noor palms are tall majestic trees also. Like the Medjools they have male and female sexes (dioecious).

The intensity of work to produce the dates is not as great as the Medjool because the young fruit do not need to be thinned. It takes about 10 years of careful culturing of a date palm before it is ready to produce. One tree can produce about 200 pounds of dates.

 
 
Pistachios are another of the gourmet nuts and in ancient times were reserved for the royalty. The pistachio trees grew wild in the high desert regions of the Holy Lands of the Middle East. They have been cultivated for over 3000 years and have been found in King Tut's tomb. The Queen of Sheba would hoard the entire Assyrian crop for the royalty and soldiers. The first plantings of pistachios in America did not happen until the 1930's in California and the first commercial crop was not harvested until 1976.  
  Pistachio trees take 6-8 years to mature and bear fruit. Their production peaks at around a hundred years and some trees are reported to be 800 years old, in the Middle East.

They also have male and female genders. The male pollinates the female with yellow pollen. The pistachios grow in grape-like clusters and are ripe when the hull splits.
 

Figs are one of the most nutritious fruits there is. They are probably one of the first fruits that man ever dried for storage. Figs are mentioned in the Book of Genesis of the Bible and in a 2000 B.C. hymnbook of the Babylonians. They were held sacred in many Southwestern Asia countries, as well as Egypt, Italy, and Greece. Spanish missionaries first planted figs at the San Diego mission in California in 1729.		  



Figs are not really a fruit! They are an inverted flower! The real fruit are the seeds, which are drupes. Fig harvesting is unique among fruits in that they are allowed to fully ripen and partially dry on the tree before falling to the ground and collected.