ArborNote’s Tree of the Week was chosen by our new Business development representative, Owzan! He has chosen the Date Palm (Phoenix dactylifera). The species is widely cultivated across northern Africa, the Middle East, Australia, South Asia, and the desert regions of Southern California in the United States. It is naturalized in many tropical and subtropical regions worldwide. Date palms reach up to 60–110 feet in height, growing singly or forming a clump with several stems from a single root system. Slow-growing, they can reach over 100 years of age when maintained properly. It is cultivated for its edible sweet fruit called dates. There is archaeological evidence of date cultivation in Arabia from the 6th millennium BCE! Because they have been cultivated for such a long time, their exact place of origin is unknown. According to some sources it probably originated from the Fertile Crescent region straddling Egypt and Mesopotamia while others state that they are native to the Persian Gulf area or derived from wild date palm from western India.Fossil records show that the date palm has existed for at least 50 million years!