Dates are the staff of life in the desert oases of the south of Morocco. You see a bunch of dates here as they near maturity in December. Dates take a full year to mature, and they like to have plenty of water and are sweetest and plumpest where it is hottest. In the oases of southern Morocco, groundwater supplies are plentiful. A Moroccan saying is that the date palms have "their heads in fire and their feet in water."