Abstract Date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) yields food, medicines, and materials for buildings and crafts in the Middle East, the Mediterranean and North Africa. There, date palms were represented on coins from 485 BC until 1189 AD. These palm-tree images furnish agricultural, botanical and geographical information on Phoenix. We aim to analyze the evolution over time of the diversity of these images and their relationship with climatic episodes favorable to their cultivation. We selected variables for analysis based on date-palm taxonomy, standardized descriptors and observation of the coins. Image types, realism and age, and relationships with climatic events were analyzed using multivariate techniques. Ten main palm-image types were recognized. Three geographically and chronologically differentiated periods are distinguished associated with favorable climate episodes. First, the western period of Carthage and Sicily (485–100 BC) with highly realistic date palm-tree images, followed by a bottleneck 100 BC–50 AD, a second period with lesser diversity of palm images (50–150 AD) centered in the eastern Mediterranean, and a third medieval period (430–1189 AD) with schematic images of palm trees. From a cultural viewpoint, our results are consistent with ancient texts for morphology, cultivation, management techniques, sterility and fertility, and tree longevity. Several image types from present-day Israel most likely represent specific ancient cultivars such as the “Caryotae”. Ancient coins offer valuable information, to better knowing characteristics of date palm trees and date-palm cultivation, from the first millennium BC to the beginning of second millennium AD. Western Mediterranean presents greatest diversity and realism related to different domestication events.