2,000-Year-Old Judean Date Seed Growing Successfully

Arutz Sheva ^ | 1-30-06 | Ezra HaLevi

[sasquatch]

Long time!

[KillTime]

Cool! Amazing the old seed can sprout. But is this one of the "signs"? =)

[SteveMcKing]

it is the oldest seed to ever produce a viable young sapling.

Oh, I bet a few seeds get frozen in glaciers, or stuck in the earth somewhere and then suddenly turn up...

Still it's wonderful. Beautiful plants!

[hole_n_one]

[wagglebee]

Wow, this is interesting.

[Brad’s Gramma]

WOW!!! And I was excited about getting an offshoot of Grandma's rose bush...!!

[bikepacker67]

I call bullshyt.

[Mamzelle]

Cool.

[wagglebee]

I don't know if this fits into any of the GGG categories or not, but it might.

[NautiNurse]

Ping

[cake_crumb]

"Together with Hadassah Hospital’s Natural Medicine Center, she seeks to use the plants listed in ancient remedies to seek effective uses for modern medical conditions."

COOL! Can't wait for the studies!

(this is what I do in my spare time....moonlight as an herbalist who believes that virii and bacterium have finite ability to program immunity, so going RETOR should kill off at least some modern strains)

[SJackson]

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[cake_crumb]

"It is a long road to our being able to eat the Judean date once again"

Take cuttings, stick 'em in Root Tone and stuff the cuttings into perlite to root, then transplant 'em into dirt. She'll have more of the same tree. I hope he's not an envirowacko. I'm turely interested in seeing the Judaen date harvested once again.

[ndt]

"Take cuttings, stick 'em in Root Tone and stuff the cuttings into perlite to root"

First I have to say. REALLY REALLY COOL STUFF!!

I'm afraid it's not that easy with date palms, you pretty much have to wait for the tree to start sending up suckers (at best a few per year and none for the first few years) or try tissue culture. I know there were some projects were working on tissue propagation of dates in California a few years back but I have no idea how it turned out.

[Brad’s Gramma]

Why?

[ndt]

"The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree..."

And then they disapeared. There is a sad irony here.

[cake_crumb]

I dunno....cuttings are a pratty traditional way to propagate date palms. They say if you DON'T dead head them, you'll have voluntters (useless and usually parasitic) all over the place)

[cake_crumb]

Note to self: when you see typos like THOSE, it's time for bed.

[bikepacker67]

Because I doubt a date seed could survive 2000 years.

Those are finicky plants from what I remember (Scicilian GG-father had 2 that he'd bend over and bury every fall)