ARCHIVED - Orihuela: Palm Sunday birth for baby palms; the future of the Palmeral is in your hands
Tiny shoots of hope in educational programme for Orihuela schoolchildren
15 tiny palm trees emerged from the darkness on Sunday morning when neither students nor teachers of the Jesús María de San Isidro school in Orihuela were there to see their birth, the first of 1,100 palm seeds planted in germinators in the Primary centers of the municipality.
This is part of an educational project involving fifth-year students, who planted the seeds under the umbrella of an initiative aiming to teach young people about the importance of conserving the historic Palmeral, as well as understanding its role in the agriculture and history of the municipality.
‘The future of the Palmeral is in your hands’ aims to germinate more than a thousand date trees which will be planted in the Palmeral next year, all grown by the students themselves.
The council has a “Palm Grove Master Plan” which aims to plant more than 3,000 date trees in the next ten years to conserve this important area for the future.
The Orihuela Palmeral is the second largest artificial palm plantation in Europe behind its near neighbour in Elche, and consists mostly of date palms (Phoenix dactylifera) which are believed to have been brought here by the Moors during their occupation of Spain between 713 and 1243. ( or 1492 in the case of the Kingdom of Granada)
The trees usually die after completing their natural lifespan of around 250 years, and some in the Palmeral are up to 300 years old. Click to read more about the Palmeral in Orihuela