Phoenix Iberica

[MrTropical]

Sharing this on the English PalmTalk to facilitate the spread of knowledge on rare and/or unusual palms. 

This is a report of Phoenix iberica from 2008, translated from the Spanish PalmTalk:

"It seems that what has been called Phoenix iberica is a wild, non-domesticated date palm that was likely already present here since the Mediterranean had a much lower sea level during the glaciations of the Würm period, which ended about 12,000 years ago. I'm not very knowledgeable in paleobotany, but it must have been during this time that other species now found on both shores crossed in one direction or another (like the Tetraclinis articulata, Abies pinsapo, etc.).

It's not possible to know what its distribution was before human pressure significantly increased with the arrival of the Romans, but it seems that the area was much broader than it is now, covering the coast (and through dry riverbeds and ravines some distance inland) from Andalusia to Alicante, and possibly further north.

The palm itself is not particularly spectacular, as you can imagine. It's not a new species from New Caledonia or Papua New Guinea, nor a rediscovered Medemia argun... Even so, it shows several characteristics that differentiate it from the cultivated date palm, such as: a high percentage of fertile pollen (80%), which explains its traditional use as a pollinator for the cultivated date palm (so how could it be a feral date palm?), shorter inflorescence peduncles, more fruits per cluster and smaller fruits (a bit larger than those of Ph. canariensis), which ripen in orange or even red quite late, in the spring of the year following flowering. The seed is less elongated than in the cultivated date palm, with blunt ends that can strongly resemble those of Ph. canariensis, but a bit more wrinkled. We found one specimen with very smooth, somewhat pointy seeds that might be a hybrid with the cultivated date palm. I think I have photos somewhere...

The leaflets are arranged more tightly on the leaves, and there are more pairs of basal spines, which are distributed over a longer section of the rachis, which sometimes takes on a yellowish-orange color, but not always. The leaflets are usually quite glaucous and a bit more leathery than in the cultivated date palm, but less so than in Ph. theophrastii (the ones I’ve seen at the Valencia botanical garden). According to Diego Rivera (the author of the book), the male flowers have fringed petals, something he seems to have taken from an observation by Cavanilles (perhaps to lend the idea more credibility, given Cavanilles' reputation as a botanist), but I don’t think that's accurate, since right below my house there are some date palms that look like they were dug up from the countryside (their seeds match the iberica type, and their trunks aren’t nursery-grown), and the male flowers have normal petals. Still, we hope to soon observe flowers on wild specimens to confirm this.

Diego Rivera and his team are or have been conducting molecular analyses of the entire Phoenix genus, including species rarely seen in cultivation like Ph. andamanensis, as well as what has been referred to as Ph. chevalierii, Ph. atlantica, and of course Ph. iberica, and it seems there are some surprising results that will be published in Acta Horticulturae, though according to the latest list of their publications, nothing on the topic has been released yet.

For now, it seems confirmed that Phoenix iberica has a level of distinctiveness comparable to Ph. theophrastii, and most likely both are remnants of the original, non-domesticated date palm that existed in North Africa and (at least) the Iberian Mediterranean coast until agriculture emerged in Mesopotamia and nearby areas."

Link to original post: 

Photo of a small Phoenix iberica in Spain, April 2025.



A special thank you to @NC_Palms for this photo.

[tim_brissy_13]

FYI P iberica is considered a synonym (or variant) of P dactylifera. 

[TropicsEnjoyer]

You should grow it alongside a pure dacty and see if there’s any noticeable differences in 5 years or so.

[Phoenikakias]

27 minutes ago, TropicsEnjoyer said:

You should grow it alongside a pure dacty and see if there’s any noticeable differences in 5 years or so.

Lol there are innumerable dacty varieties and several of them carry already genes of other wild spp, through cross pollination having taken place in antiquity! I have experimented the same way with seedlings of Phoenix atlantica var marocana, which is supposedly another synonym of dactylifera.  I was thus able to compare resulted seedlings with those dacty ones from the medjool variety and admittedly they differed a lot both in terms of appearance and speed of growth (medjool seedlings were 2X faster).  But who can assure me that same comparison results would turn out if I test other dacty varieties? Anyway here are some details of the most advanced specimen of atlantica var marocana in my garden.

[TropicsEnjoyer]

@Phoenikakias Yeah that is a good point 🫤. I’ve grown date palms from some medjool seeds and each one of them looks somewhat different. Different leaf thickness, stiffness, growth rate, development, etc.  It still could be interesting though.