SEED of EXTINCT DATE PALM SPROUTS After 2,000 YEARS

Ain't nature spectacular????!!!!
It has five leaves, stands 14 inches high and is nicknamed
Methuselah. It looks like an ordinary date palm seedling, but for
UCLA- educated botanist Elaine Solowey, it is a piece of history
brought back to life. Planted on Jan. 25, the seedling growing in
the black pot in Solowey's nursery on this kibbutz in Israel's Arava
desert is 2,000 years old -- more than twice as old as the 900-year-
old biblical character who lent his name to the young tree. It is the
oldest seed ever known to produce a viable young tree.
The seed that produced Methuselah was discovered during
archaeological excavations at King Herod's palace on Mount
Masada, near the Dead Sea. Its age has been confirmed by
carbon dating. Scientists hope that the unique seedling will
eventually yield vital clues to the medicinal properties of the fruit of
the Judean date tree, which was long thought to be extinct....
The Judean date is chronicled in the Bible, Quran and ancient
literature for its diverse powers -- from an aphrodisiac to a
contraceptive -- and as a cure for a wide range of diseases
including cancer, malaria and toothache. For Christians, the palm
is a symbol of peace associated with the entry of Jesus into
Jerusalem. The ancient Hebrews called
the date palm the "tree of
life" because of the protein in its fruit and the shade given by its
long leafy branches. The Arabs said there were as many uses for
the date palm as there were days in the year. Greek architects
modeled their Ionic columns on the tree's tall, thin trunk and
curling, bushy top. The Romans called it Phoenix dactylifera --
"the date-bearing phoenix"
-- because it never died and appeared to be reborn in the
desert where all other plant life perished.
Now Solowey and her colleagues have brought this phoenix of the
desert back to life after 2,000 years.
The ancient seeds were found 30 years ago during archeological
excavations on Mount Masada, the mountaintop fortress on the
shore of the Dead Sea where King Herod built a spectacular
palace. When the Romans conquered Palestine and laid waste to
the Temple in Jerusalem, Masada was the last stand of a small
band of Jewish rebels who held out against three Roman legions
for several years before committing mass suicide in A.D. 73.
Archaeologist Ehud Netzer found the seeds, which were identified
by the department of botanical archaeology at Israel's Bar-Ilan
University. Then they were placed in storage, where they lay for
30 years until Sallon heard about the cache. "When we asked if
we could try and grow some of them, they said, 'You're mad,' but
they gave us three seeds," she said. Sallon took the seeds to
Solowey, who has cultivated more than 3,000 date palms and
rarities like the trees that produce the fragrant resins frankincense
and myrrh. Solowey admits she was skeptical about the chances
of success with this project. "When I received the seeds from
Sarah, I thought the chances of this experiment succeeding were
less than zero," said Solowey, cradling the precious seedling in a
specially quarantined section of her nursery on the kibbutz. "But
Dr. Sallon insisted and I took this very seriously. Lotus seeds over
1,000 years old have been sprouted, and I realized that no one had
done any similar work with dates, so why not give it our best shot
-- and we were rewarded."
"It's certainly the oldest tree seed that's ever been sprouted.
Wheat seeds from pharaohs' tombs have been sprouted, but none
of the plants have survived for very long. Before this, the oldest
seed grown was a lotus from China, which was 1,200 years old,"
she said. "I'm very excited. I wasn't expecting anything to happen.
I'm really interested in finding out what the DNA testing is going to
show. I know that date seeds can stay alive for several decades.
To find out that they can stay alive for millennia is astonishing."
... When the Romans invaded ancient Judea, thick forests of date
palms towering up to 80 feet high and 7 miles wide covered the
Jordan River valley from the Sea of Galilee in the north to the
shores of the Dead Sea in the south. The tree so defined the local
economy that Emperor Vespasian celebrated the conquest by
minting the "Judea Capta," a special bronze coin that showed the
Jewish state as a weeping woman beneath a date palm.
Today, nothing remains of those mighty forests....
The ancient Judean date, renowned for its succulence and famed
for its many medicinal properties, had been lost to history. Until now
~Matthew Kalman, SF Chronicle Foreign Service.
SOURCE: www.sfgate.com