Date vs Date Plum: What's the Difference?
Short answer: A date (Phoenix dactylifera) is the fruit of a desert palm - a long, wrinkled, intensely sweet fruit with chewy caramel flesh and a single hard pit. A date plum (Diospyros lotus) is a small, round fruit of a persimmon relative, orange to purple-black when ripe, tasting like a cross between a date and a plum. They're unrelated; the date plum simply earned its name from that date-like sweetness.
| 🌴 Date | 🟤 Date-plum | |
|---|---|---|
| Taste | Deeply sweet — caramel, brown butter, honey, and hints of cinnamon — with flesh from fudge-soft (Medjool) to firm-chewy (Deglet Noor). Fresh yellow Barhi dates are crisp and lightly astringent, a different fruit entirely. | Very sweet and honeyed when fully ripe and soft, with a flavor between date, plum, and persimmon; astringent and mouth-drying until dead-ripe, like all its Diospyros kin. |
| Type | Tropical & subtropical | Tropical & subtropical |
| Peak season | Autumn, Year-round | Autumn, Winter |
| Origin | Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf; cultivated 6,000+ years — possibly the oldest orchard crop | The Caucasus, Anatolia, and temperate Asia |
| Calories (per 100 g) | 277 | 70 |
| Sugar (per 100 g) | 66.5 g | 14 g |
| Vitamin C (per 100 g) | — | 20 mg |
| Typical price | Mid | Budget |
The date and the date plum share a syllable and a sweet, caramel character - and almost nothing else. One grows on a palm; the other is a persimmon.
The date (Phoenix dactylifera) is the fruit of the date palm, a cornerstone of desert agriculture for thousands of years. Its fruit is long and oval, with thin skin over dense, chewy, deeply sweet flesh - all toffee, honey, and brown sugar - around one hard, grooved pit. Popular varieties like Medjool and Deglet Noor are sold dried or semi-dried and eaten as-is.
The date plum (Diospyros lotus) is a small round fruit from a tree in the persimmon and ebony family. Ripe, it’s about the size of a large cherry or small plum, coloured yellow-orange to blue-black, with soft, sweet, jammy flesh that genuinely tastes like a date crossed with a plum - which is exactly where the name comes from. Like other persimmons, it’s astringent until fully soft.
So don’t be fooled by the shared name: the date is a chewy palm fruit you buy in a box; the date plum is a small, soft persimmon you pick ripe from a tree.
Frequently asked questions
Is a date plum a kind of date?
No. The date plum (Diospyros lotus) is a species of persimmon, in the ebony family, not a palm fruit. It got its name because its sweet, soft, ripe flesh reminded people of both dates and plums, not because it's related to either.
Which one is the big chewy fruit in the shops?
That's the date, from the date palm - the Medjool and Deglet Noor you see sold in boxes. Date plums are small, round, and far less common commercially; you're most likely to find them from a garden tree or a specialty grower.
Do date plums need to be soft to eat, like other persimmons?
Yes. Like many persimmons, date plums are astringent until fully ripe and soft, when they turn sweet and jammy. Eaten firm they can be mouth-puckeringly tannic. Dates, by contrast, are ready to eat straight from the box.