18 February 1856: Sheet #3

Transcription

The Palm of Egypt

Finding myself for several months in the most beautiful countryside of Basso – Egypt, owned by the late Mr. Serra and adorned with six thousand Palms sown by him, I had the idea of getting information from the indigenous people on something that is ignored in Europe, about a majestic, unique, and most useful plant.

Sowing/Planting of the Kernel

'Naua-el-ballah Glu' Nauaja' (date pits) are distinguished by an external making from which the 'Male or Female' tree is born, but in general it seems that they have disregarded this advantageous difference. Even families of eastern Egypt, many farmers and even vendors of this fruit, ensure that the pits that are of the opposite part from the longitudinal DICIZIONE; that have a small round circle with a point in the center; and that are sown produce fruit bearing trees (that is, 'female') and from the other pits without these distinctions produce 'male' trees, which flower but do not bear fruit. Planted during autumn in fertile soil and irrigated after around fifteen days, the pit begins to germinate; at a month, it produces some small leaves which remain long, narrow, and grooved lengthwise until around eight months. There are no more than five or six of these leaves which vary in height depending on how favorable the circumstances of the terrain are for one or two palms.

Metamorphosis of the Leaves

At this age, these leaves, joined like the blade of a spear and all of the same shape, change their form, splitting apart at their grooves like the opening of a compass; positioned one within the other to form a branch adorned with narrow, long, and TERRUCINANTI leaves with very sharp thorns. Each month the plant forms one of these branches and destroys the previous ones; the more it grows the more branches it produces in the span of a year. At this age, the branches grow to fifty to one hundred centimeters long and have a diameter of around a meter, but the trunk grows very little and remains short.

How to Recognize the Age of a Palm

Recognizing the age of a palm is not an issue needing to be resolved, but the plant's range of growth that it exhibits can mislead someone. This is seen by the palms that are twenty to thirty feet tall and twenty to thirty years old, compared to others that are five feet tall yet of the same age. It is said that the palm lives for two to three centuries and grows in the Memfi region to as tall as eighty to one hundred feet. To know a Palm's true age, one does not count the number of GERIT cuts as many believe, but rather (in general) four cuts, one on top of the other, equals one year, since there are so many cuts around the plant itself.

Various Forms of the Palm

Farmed palms generally have a cylindrical trunk, but some vary in being cone-shaped, straight, or backwards; in some plants, one sees the perforations in different parts of the trunks, from others, areas that are thin and worn out at a certain height, and when they are abandoned in forests and create offspring (a kind of shady area in oases that are beneficial for the plants), the external plants bend towards the ground, they produce a root at the halfway point of the trunk, and little by little it curves towards the center to form a semi-circle shaped tree.

Circumcision of the Palm

As soon as one wants to regenerate the trunk of palm that is weak or deficient, they must make holes in the trunk at a meter around the GERIT and stick various pieces of wood in them. They put silt from the Nile all around these pieces of wood and they frequently dampen them. They leave it until the next year, until the season when it has formed new roots; then they cut the trunk underneath the silt, uproot the old one, and transplant the top so that the plant and what is called the 'Tahara' (circumcision) are regenerated.

The Difficulty in Recognizing the Sex of a Palm

It is known to be impossible to tell the sex of a palm before it flowers. The famous Mohamed Aly, who was highly involved in the well-being of Egypt, had promised a large reward to whoever could tell if a palm was male or female before it flowered; he questioned all the gardeners and none could say. Mr. Serra told me that a boastful Arab, who was a gardener from Lake Edko, came to his town and claimed that by looking at the branches he could tell the sex of the plant. Mr. Serra sent for the branch of a male tree to be brought, keeping the so-called expert at his house to show it to him. He said it was female and they laughed in his face, but he was unperturbed. Like a con artist used to the jeers, excused himself with the usual 'maalesc' (it does not matter) and so he proved what the great prince wanted, and before the SICITURA nothing is known.

The Significant Variation of the Season In Which the Palm Flourishes

The unique palm pant has not shown to produce flowers in any fixed season since one year it will bloom, the next it will not, and it might the third; it varies greatly – There are some palms that show signs of their sex at two, three and five years of age, and others that do not until eight, ten, fifteen and twenty years.

The Season of Flowering

Some palms flower in February, but generally they do so in March then continue throughout April and for part of May.

Marriage of the Palm

The two sexes are known to flower, though the flowers of the male or those of the female may be in the 'cuss' (vase) or a kind of pouch from which then the female's are also produced; they are the same as the male's but longer and thinner. By a tradition of the wise ancient Egyptians, the hard-working Arab man, who obtains the biggest and best fruit, cuts the 'Dakar' (the male flower) from the male pouch, splits it into various pieces, and puts one in the center of the 'Nitaie' (the female flower). He then ties it so it does not fall and so that the air, agitating them both, lets dust into the female flowers to fertilize them, creating a forced union instead of having to wait for the spontaneous arrival of the season's winds. This way, one male can fertilize hundreds of females. The pollen of the male palm smells similar to its sperm, the Arabs thought of it, therefore, as an aphrodisiac and would sometimes eat it. The female pollen was able to be fertilized by the male even from a far distance because of a strong, fundamental attraction between them from the universe. If this procedure were carried out in Europe, fruit would be produced as a result of this phenomenon of attraction.

Metamorphosis of the Palm

I was assured by many palm growers that they had seen a male plant become female, and had even seen some become hermaphroditic; in Arabic, 'Hente' ,that is, 'half male and half female.'

Proliferation of the Palm

Both the males and females multiply substantially, and these offspring are always related to the plant that created them. One sees the father and its child, and the mother and its child, flower simultaneously; one always notices that the leaves of these offspring do not generate like the palms born from a kernel, rather, they behave like the adult. Generally, the offspring of the female are transplanted and those of the male are destroyed. The palm is not receptive to all transplants because if any of its extremities are cut, it dies instantly.

A Coptic Tale

There is a belief among Coptic and Arabic farmers of palms that the male plant has a bladder under its root, the same as that of animals known as 'Bedten' (two eggs), and by removing them, the male becomes female. I dug up the ground of various palms of different developmental stages and I found nothing. If they were lost during the transplantation process then these trees would all be female, and if this were true, everyone would extract the eggs of the male to make it female given that one female is enough to fertilize many plants. Ultimately, the dishonest people of mid-Egypt would want a male palm to make it immoral, and others of the Basso, who are generally more honest, say 'Kalam battal di' to this and would speak badly of it. They would want to say it was not true; everyone, however, claims that no one can find it.

Cultivation of the Palm

In some small, abandoned oases in the Arabic desert, I saw several palm groves with all of their branches that nature had given them, and because of this they had a strange and awkward appearance. The cultivated palm has a thin, sturdy appearance and grows larger each year; the 'gerit' (branches) are cut, and the industrious Arab is able to create so many useful domestic objects out of them that there would be too many to list. Around the top of the trunk, the large parts of the cut branches are left to be able to tether heavy bunches to them. These branches, called 'Gahf', are cut the year after. They are either burned or made into 'magascia' (brooms). Under the 'gahf' one finds the 'eldiffa', a cinnamon-colored canvas that is designed beautifully by nature, out of which various kinds of ropes are made. This material may have given primitive men the idea to weave and create the first articles of clothing; just a single piece of this fabric is enough to cover oneself, which is something even barbarians did as seen by the people at the first waterfalls.