Looking for some Date Palms

[aham]

Greetings from St.Croix USVI!  I just discovered your site and I'm glad I did.  I'm starting a tropical fruit grove with roughly 80 trees and I am missing a few things including date palms!  Anyone know where I can get some?  I would also like a peanut butter tree, Rambutan, Figoa, and Mangosteen.  Happy growing to you all.

[FlyingFoxFruits]

sorry for being a negative Nancy,

but a friend I know told me of a man who was mowing his yard on a riding lawnmower, and one of the thorns from this tree inadvertently jabbed his face, running about five inches deep, right along his temple, just missing his ocular cavity.  it was said to be the most painful thing ever!  and these thorns even ruin heavy duty tractor tires by piercing  them!

with all of this said, I've had some high quality dates before, and I would be happy to risk such injuries for such a delicious sweet fruit and  beautiful tree.


I think depending on your location you can get bareroot plants from California, Israel, or Asia??

best of luck! please research your climate (they don't grow near me in high humidity, low elevation) and some cultivars may be oustandingly high in quality or more suitable for your growing conditions.

[fyliu]

I believe the USDA has a germplasm of them that you could request from. It's probably in Riverside. But to grow from the slips to fruiting tree would take tens of years. ~30. There are growers selling them as ornamentals to shopping malls here in SoCal. I see the trees everywhere and nobody realizes
 they're edible except maybe the mexican landscapers.

[ReneeFLL]

Would that be like a Canary Island Date palm?

[LEOOEL]

Zone 10b
Man I love Palm Dates. I wish there were some Palm Date cultivars that actually produced fruit in my Zone 10b (Miami, South Florida, U.S.A.).