Monday, November 4, 2013

Phoenix dactylifera Back From Extinction

Wow 2,000 year old seeds still viable.
Extinct tree grows anew from ancient jar of seeds unearthed by archaeologists.
Something for the religious minded to read up on. Apparently the Roman Empire tried destroying this plant before they'd accepted Christianity as the one true religion of the empire. 

This is actually a cultivar of the true species which still exists today. But the real headline here is that the seeds are still viable after 2,000 years! This reminds me of the school down in Texas where a professor burred seeds in jars with instructions to dig them up at certain intervals. The findings thus far show that seeds to many plants can still be viable 50 or even 200 years later but I'd never heard of anything 2,000 years old before. Neat.