Thanks EBH.
Posted on 03/29/2015 5:41:32 PM PDT by EBH
et out the cigars—Methuselah, a Judean date palm tree that was grown from a 2,000 year old seed, has become a papa plant.
Elaine Solowey, of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies at Kibbutz Ketura in Israel, recently broke the good news to National Geographic:
“He is over three meters [ten feet] tall, he's got a few offshoots, he has flowers, and his pollen is good," she says. "We pollinated a female with his pollen, a wild [modern] female, and yeah, he can make dates."
Methuselah sprouted back in 2005, when agriculture expert Solowey germinated his antique seed. It had been pulled from the remains of Masada, an ancient fortification perched on a rock plateau in southern Israel, and at the time, no one could be sure that the plant would thrive. But he has, and his recent reproductive feat helps prove just how well he’s doing.
For a while, the Judean date palm was the sole representative of his kind: Methuselah’s variety was reportedly wiped out around 500 A.D. But Solowey has continued to grow date palms from ancient seeds discovered in the region, and she tells National Geographic that she is “trying to figure out how to plant an ancient date grove.” Doing so would allow researchers to better understand exactly what earlier peoples of the region were eating and how it tasted.
At 2,000 years old, Methuselah’s seed isn’t the most aged to be used to grow a plant—not by a long shot. Back in 2012, a team of Russian scientists unearthed a cache of seeds from a prehistoric squirrel burrow that had been covered in ice. They eventually succeeded in germinating the 32,000-year-old specimens, which grew into an arctic plant closely resembling the modern narrow-leafed Campion.
Thanks EBH.
This date palm was the Tree of Life that grew in the courtyard of the Temple back in the old days.
Reading the h/l made me wonder if this post had sexual content. It turned out to be a satisfying read...
Interesting. I just read recently that palm trees aren’t trees. They are actually a grass. They don’t have a root system like trees do, just a big root ball.
Of course if I am mistaken, a freeper will be here to correct me in a few seconds.
Are date palms some kind of Vulcan courting ritual?
ISIS ground forces being deployed to chop down and burn this Judean Date grove in 3... 2... 1...
Lookin’ for a date?
Yummy....
White Tree of Nimloth?
For all the times I’ve peered at a coworker’s plant and told them whether the plant is male, female, or both, it looks really weird to see a gender-specific pronoun used with a plant.
I think I would have said “male tree” and continued to use the neutral pronoun to refer to it.
That they could get that germ line activated again is really splendid. Tip o' the kippah to the great Israeli agronomists.
bookmark
This is incredibly good news for Christians, because the Judean palm was the original Palm Sunday palm.
Making fertile dates with a different tree is also important, because though the dates will be hybrid, most of the genetic matter of the other date can be purged over generations, except the female chromosome, creating trees that are almost identical to the ancient ones.
THey have barely any root system at all. When I lived in TX, my neighbor planted a pair of them in front of his house that were over 20 feet tall. They had to be held in place with a pyramid of 2 x 4s for about 5 years. (The whole neighborhood just about stopped talking to this neighbor because they looked so ugly.) Then one day, a truck pulled up and yanked them out. They were nearly 30 feet tall by then. My neighbor sai that he'd sold them. But I lived in fear the whole time that they were there every time hurrican season came around. I was sure that one of them would be driven right through my living room window. LOL
I agree, this detail is part of the modern culture thing to personify the earth and its components.
Ping.
“Are date palms some kind of Vulcan courting ritual?”
You mean Pon Farr?
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