The Brownsville daily herald. [volume] (Brownsville, Tex.) 1897-1910, 1909-08-12

where the beautiful flowers OF the
date palm will emit their flood of
strange fragrance. then darken, with
er and fall away without fulfilling
the end for which nature developed
! them. unless artifcially pollinated, ;"
said Harvey E. Styles, the well known
horticulturist, to Herald man dur
ing his recent visit to the city.
"As you know. the date palm has
its pistilatte and staminate flowers
always on separate trees and. if al
lowed to develop naturally, will not
produce a fully matured fruit, al
though attractive to the eye, to be
sure, by reason of the rich golden
masses held up by golden arms.
This undeveloped fruit is in reality,
a moor makeshift for the mature
date, brought by scientific culture to
the full measure of its gorgeous rich
ness of color, form and taste. No
where in the world does the fruie
the date palm attain perfection ex-
cept by the artificial pollination of
the pistillate date flowers. This fact
is well illustrated by the bunch Of
dates now on exhibition at the Com
mercial Club rooms in Brownsville.
This is from a tree in the yard of w.
F. bennett. The flowers of the palm
from which these were taken were
pollinated by me when l was last in
Brownsville but so late, that good
results were out of the question. II
YOU will examine this bunch you will
find a few mature dates containing
fully formed seeds which, without
doubt were pollinated naturally at
the proper time, while all the others
are small, tasteless and seedless.
1 Some of the blossoms on this same
palm, however, were not 'pasado' at
the time of my other visit, and these,
you will find, have developed into
perfect dates, thus demonstrating
the difference in results between
natural and artificial pollination.
THE date palm" continued Prof.
Stiles, "thrives wonderfully in many
parts of Mexico, but neither its full
beauty nor surprising value was full
ly realized or achieved until the
splendid tree in Zaragoza plaza, in
Monterey, was pollinated in 1908 and
there resulted in the following August
a most wonderful crop, estimated at
fully 1000 pounds of perfect, ripe
dates. Each fruit was many times
the size of the few previously pro-
duced. unpollinated, imperfect ones,
and rich, sweet and delicious, instead
of insipid, tasteless and colorless as
before. I had the honor to direct
this work, and, as a result was asked
by Sr Don Jesus Gonzales Trevino, a
wealthy resident of Monterey, to visit
his garden in which were a number
: of very fine date trees, to perform a
similar work l did so, and pollin-
: ated few clusters which also deyel-
+ oped into great masses of delicious
fruits.
''Then the interest of this gen
2 tleman's young wife was aroused, and
this year. she has endeavored to
2 carry out to the fullest extent, under
5 her personal supervision, this fascin-
r ating and valuable work in practicai
l horticulture with such success that
she has one tree with full dozen
/ great clusters of dates, assured of
e maturity that will probably make
fully 500 pounds of ripe, perfect
D fruit next month.
Another tree in this garden has
four clusters of fruit in the same
assured condition This last is a
: rare, odd variety of date, the fruit
: of which is 2 brilliant red when ripe.
as proved by last years pollinaaon,
: instead of the usual rich golden
color.
This demonstration of the i'm
!. mense possibilities offered by date
J, 10 puIu 6m on 81 oo!xeIN VI eInlInc
the utmost Importance to that coun-
}, try for, without doubt, great areas
g of the republic are ideally adapted
) to the production of the date in all its
perfection. The tree is already wide.
r, Iy disseminated for its charms of foil.
: age and form, so that an immediate
test of the ability of the palm tc
perfect its fruit is possible in hund
;. reds of localities. While these are
not select varieties, such as should
= be planted for producing the bes
dates, yet they furnish the materia
with which horticultural science car