Date farms in southern california

The Medjool is the only variety of date that is picked fresh and eaten fresh. Twenty-four off shoots of those original trees were planted in the Bard Valley, in 1944, by Stanley Dillman, date pioneer in the region. Nine plants survived, and in 1935 they were located to Southern California.

It was introduced into the United States in 1927 the eleven original shoots were placed in quarantine for seven years in Needles California. A few of the original palms or their off shoots are still found in Southern California and Mexico. The date was introduced to the western hemisphere by Spanish missionaries, who planted date seeds around the missions in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. This valuable food helped sustain desert peoples and nomadic wanderers of the Middle East and North Africa. The date is one of the oldest cultured tree crops, with records showing that in Mesopotamia, it was cultivated more than 5,000 years ago.