11 - The Date Palm

The date palm is a wonderful tree. People eat dates. They feed them to their animals. They use the leaves and the wood to build houses. They use the wood to build boats. They make baskets from the leaves. They burn the other parts of the tree to cook their food.

The date palm came from the Middle East. Seven thousand (7,000) years ago, people in Syria and Egypt ate dates. They made pictures of date palms on their stone buildings. Today date palms grow in the Middle East, parts of Asia and Africa, southern Europe, and other warm parts of the world.

There are more than 2,700 kinds of palm trees. Most of them cannot grow in the Middle East because it is too dry. The date palm grows there very well.

Hundreds of years ago, people in southern Europe and some Arab countries made pictures of palm trees and palm flowers on some of their buildings. Today we can see these pictures in art museums. People think that the palm tree is beautiful. People thought the same thing a long time ago.