Egypt’s Doum Palms Keep Growing Against the Odds

In the stark desert south of the oasis town of Baris, doum palms, known as “l-Nakheel El-Bahari,” grow, drawing on groundwater far below the sand through roots that have sustained them for centuries, perhaps millennia.

Wadi el-Doum, the “valley of doum” south of Baris, is the best-known stand of palms that grow without human cultivation. A different Wadi Doum, 56 kilometers south of Suez, marks the species’ northernmost wild range,  according to a 2016 paper by Suez Canal University. The wild trees dot the village of Bulaq, south of the city of Kharga, and stretch across the Baris district, producing fine, small, and sweeter fruit than that grown elsewhere.

The doum tree is a study in patience. It can take roughly five to six years to bear fruit, then keeps producing for decades, and some specimens live beyond 100 years, according to the 2016 study. Unlike the date palm common in the oases, the doum branches into several arms crowned with broad fan-shaped leaves armed with sharp spines. 

Egyptians have known the tree for millennia and planted it as well as letting it grow wild. Doum fruit was a common funerary offering, and the palm symbolized renewal and longevity in ancient Egyptian thought, according to the 2016 study. Tomb paintings show it among the gardens the dead hoped to enjoy in the afterlife, and a papyrus records that Ramesses III offered 449,500 measures of the fruit to the god Amun-Re. Additionally, in 2007, archaeologists led by Zahi Hawass announced the discovery of eight baskets of roughly 3,000-year-old doum fruit in Tutankhamun’s tomb. 

The tree’s wood, prized for its hardness and resistance to weather, roofed old houses, shaped farm tools and built rural fences. It also resists insects and grows stronger in water. A Roman-era doum pipe found at El-Moharaka, in the outer oases, is now in a Cairo museum, and similar pipes are still used in deep oasis wells. Leaves were woven into baskets, mats and hand fans, fibers twisted into rope, and the stone-hard seeds carved into prayer beads and souvenirs that artisans now sell to tourists.

The fruit, which ripens in February through April, is the tree’s best-known gift. Harvesters gather it from the ground or knock it down with long poles, then dry it for storage, a quality that once made it provisions for desert travelers. Roughly orange-sized, with a hard brown shell, it holds sweet pulp around a rock-hard seed. 

The fruit is rich in fiber and antioxidants, as well as potassium, calcium, magnesium, and iron, according to a 2020 paper by Kuwait’s Environment and Life Sciences Research Center. Soaked, simmered, and sweetened, it becomes a brown drink served cold in summer and warm in winter.

Scientists have taken notice, too. A 2022 academic review by the Pharmacognosy Department at Cairo University describes the doum as a promising functional food, citing its nutritional value and medicinal properties. According to a 2018 paper by King Faisal University in Saudi Arabia, water extracts of the fruit may help lower elevated blood fats.

The doum has outlasted pharaohs, droughts and centuries of neglect. What it may not outlast is a modern preference for crops that pay back sooner.