Some Palm Fruit is Edible, Many Not Desirable

Q. My palm tree is about 20 years old and this year put out big bunches of berries. It does not seem like a date to me because they are small and round with not much flesh around the seed. Are they edible by humans?  

Palm of reader.

A. It depends on the palm. Many types of date palms have been planted all over Las Vegas and these trees frequently produce a lot of fruit at several times during the year. Date palms cross pollinate easily so there is a lot of variability in fruit quality, color, size and time of year they produce fruit.

Fruiting of Canary Island Date palm, fruits are edible but not desirable.

            All palms I know of in the Mojave Desert produce flowers and fruit when sexually mature.

The fruit ranges from delicious to inedible to toxic depending on the palm. To my knowledge, there are no palms that survive and produce toxic fruit in the Mojave Desert. There are some which produce what I call “inedible” fruit.

Date palm planted in the parking lot of a Dollar General store in Las Vegas.

            There are palms that produce fruit that you can eat but you don’t want to eat them because they taste awful or don’t have much “flesh” such as the Canary Island Palm and the California and Mexican Fan Palms.

This boat tail grackel knows the dates on the ground are sweet and good to eat.

            There are other palms that produce edible fruit in the Mojave Desert such as the Jelly Palm and the Chilean Wine Palm. As far as tree size goes, the Jelly Palm is more desirable as a landscape tree because it is much smaller at maturity than the huge Chilean wine Palm. This palm lays claim to the largest palm in the world!

            Watch the birds. If the birds pick up the fruit from the ground and eat it, it’s probably edible. If birds leave it alone, it probably isn’t.