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Below is a time-lapse video of sampling a date palm.
On 29 March 2023, as part of my mission for the al-‘Ulā DPA project, I worked on a date palm tree of the ḫaybariyyah variety (designated and commented on by its owner) on a property in the al-Ḥijr palm grove near al-’Ulā. This palm, young and easily accessible, is not representative of the difficulty of the task, as of the more than 500 palms I sampled in the region, many were far more complex to reach and sample.
Unexpectedly, as I was taking a photo of this palm tree with the identification number 510, my phone, which was filming, captured an image of myself photographing the palm tree: a sort of mise en abyme. You can see this photograph at the top of the page.