2000 year old seed

[Tom]

I just got my new National Geographic.  There is a picture in there of a date palm in a pot.  The researcher, a lady, soaked a 2000 year old date palm seed, smeared some chemicals on it and is growing a tree that is perported to have had the sweetest dates in the middle east.   Apparently the species has disappeared.  Of the hundreds of seeds she treated this way to revive them, her success rate is 1.

This might be an interesting story to follow.  I hope they do.

[Radar67]

I seem to recall reading a short article on this a while back. The lady was thinking about trying to revive the seeds but didn't have a plan when the article was written.

It will be interesting if she can get the tree to bear fruit again. How does a date tree pollinate?

[Tom]

From the sounds of the article, their are little girl trees and little boy trees.  I guess you have to get them together pretty close.   Some insect cupids might help.

They say they are hoping that this tree will be a little girl tree.  Perhaps it can be pollinated by another species of date palm.  The fruit would probably be the same, it's just that the offspring would be different.  I wonder if they will have to put them in desegregated pots?

They better be careful or we'll have a period of "Great Date Wars". 

[asy]

I'm interested to know firstly, where she got the seeds, and secondly, how she knew they were 2000 years old!

It does sound like a great story, though, I wonder if it's a self-pollinating variety or if there's something close enough that's still alive to x-polinate it with, it'd be a shame if it died out...

asy

[SwampDonkey]

I saw a nature show the other night and it started out in one segment explaining that they found evidence of ancient ape like creatures from thousands of years ago cracking palm nuts for the meats. It turns out, it wasn't a humanoid it was a little monkey. He climbs the palm and knocks on each palm nut to check for ripeness. From the ones he figures are ripe he cuts them loose from the palm and they land on the ground to cure for 3 or 4 days. He then gathers them and takes them to a big stone where he places the palm nut and uses a smaller stone, which he can barely lift over his head and uses it the crack the nuts. Now it turns out, they learn a method of striking the nuts so it doesn't fly off the cracking station 20 feet away. But, struck a certain way the nut never leaves the cracking station and it may take 4 or 5 whacks with this big rock to crack it open. Now it just got me to thinking about them 2000 year old date palm nuts. You figure some monkey stashed them away some place for later when the bigger palm nuts were past season, that he would go retrieve them date nuts to crack? One problem though, are there monkeys in the middle east?

[Tom]

The Article is on an unnumbered page, that I have discerned to be #28, labled Science.  There is a picture of the plant and the short ariticle below it reads, in its entirety:

Seeds of Israel's Past   Not many people would take 2,000-year-old artifacts, soak them in water, douse them in chemicals and stick them in dirt.  That's what horticulturist Elain Solowey does with seeds found at Israel's Masada, a cliff-top fortress where Romans in A.D. 73 laid siege to 960 Jews, almost all of whom are said to have committed suicide rather than surrender.

So far,exactly one of her seeds has sprouted: a date palm nicknamed Methuselah.  That's good news for gourmands.  Ancient Judaea's dates were the sweetest, wrote Pliny the Elder in the first century A.D.  But those trees and other crops disappeared as the Jewish presence in the region dwindled; by the time of the Crusades the palms were gone.  In 2012 or so, Methuselah will flower, revealing whether it's a female that could bear fruit.  "I've got my fingers crossed for a girl," says Soloway.  -Helen Fields

[SwampDonkey]

I eat a lot of palm dates, so maybe......... 

However, almost sounds like retrieving DNA from frozen 8,000 year old mammoths to pragnate Asian elephant embryos. Well, not quite as extreme.

Ok, off to get a handful of dates. 

[kelLOGg]

Masada, a cliff-top fortress where Romans in A.D. 73 laid siege to 960 Jews, almost all of whom are said to have committed suicide rather than surrender.

  -Helen Fields

That's the site where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. Now even more interesting stuff has surfaced.
Bob

[Grawulf]

Herod's summer cottage......
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Archaeology/Masada1.html