Israelis growing ancient date palm for medical research
A late date?
Fascinating
I love dates
When the fig tree blossoms, know that the time is near.
Very cool story! Thanks for posting it.
Neat-o.
They need to put a ban on Monsanto ever getting their stinking hands on it.
Thanks for the interesting article. It’s amazing that something can be revivified from prehistory without tampering. I hope they’ll be able to get some fruit.
History and science I can sink my teeth into.
I've been kinda following this. I read that the Judean date was such a delicacy, so prized, and so important to the area's export market, that when the Romans destroyed the Temple in 70 AD and, by slaughter or forced exile, depopulated all of Judea, they also methodically destroyed all of the stored harvest and all the Judean date orchards, down to exterminating each and every plant. They hated Judean Jews that much.
It is splendid that these Israeli researchers can "resurrect" this cultivar. They should name their next successful sapling "Lazarus"!
2000-year-old seed?
Talk about desperate for a date!
Maybe they went extinct for a reason. Perhaps they tasted bad or caused diarrhea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judean_date_palm
>>>By May 2015, the palm was 3.0 metres (9.8 ft) tall and was producing pollen.[5]
Even if the pollination of a female Judean date palm, grown of a seed from the same batch, with Methuselah’s pollen should succeed, the resulting fruit would not represent the recreation of the original ancient cultivar, i.e. the resulting fruit will not have the taste of its ancient predecessor, given that cultivars are created through repeated asexual reproduction through shoots, and not through seeds.<<<
Methuselah, sprouted in 2005, will now have playmates?
