What's the date information in the official client based upon?

[Bitsky]

I've been playing around with a new PC and already let it download a part of the blockchain (still 130 days or so left).
Since I didn't have access to my wallet when I started, I replaced it later and started Bitcoin with the rescan option.
Now the transactions have the date 27.06.2012, which is not even remotely correct (some of them are at least a year older).
Obviously, that's also not today's date, so which date is it?
There has always been a bit of a mismatch between what eg blockchain.info displays, but this difference makes the whole column pretty much useless.

[Raoul Duke]

The last time I deleted all transactions from my wallet and did a rescan they all got the date/time of when the rescan found the transactions on the blockchain.
So, if you were downloading the blockchain, the date/time is the date/time at which the transactions were found by the client.

[Bitsky]

The last time I deleted all transactions from my wallet and did a rescan they all got the date/time of when the rescan found the transactions on the blockchain.
So, if you were downloading the blockchain, the date/time is the date/time at which the transactions were found by the client.

Well, then the date should be 03.08.2011, not 26.06.2011, right?
Even the transactions the client is confirming right now during the rest of the download have that date.

[Raoul Duke]

Never seen that behaviour before.
But I notice that every time I get a transaction when the client is not running it always gets timestamped with the date/time of when the client knew about it when I start it and the transaction arrives, which is consistent with the rescan timestamping when the wallet has all transactions cleared.

Maybe it's the date the transactions have on the wallet.dat that is giving those discrepancies, as you still have them on the wallet.dat, even if you delete the blockchain.

Maybe one of the devs will chime in and give you a logic explanation for that behaviour.