Growing date palms from 2000-year-old seeds: it's working! (Seeds are amazing.)

I've got a horse chestnut tree growing by a ravine that's the only one like it on the property.  In fact, I haven't seen another one like it anywhere in this county.  And it's only about twenty years old.  Where did the seed come from?  It's pretty big to be carried by a bird, and it's not in a good place for water transport.  And it didn't fall off a bigger tree, that's for sure.  Unless...it was in the "seed bank" in my soil for so long that the "bigger tree" has died and rotted away, or was burned decades ago when the land was cleared for pasture.

The seed bank in our soil is amazing.  I am always astonished by the things that come up when you disturb ground and then watch what grows.  And of course the seed bank is amazing because seeds are amazing.

Case in point: back in 2008, there was a lot of excitement when an Israeli researcher successfully germinated a date palm seed found at the site of Masada (where the Romans killed all those rebels).  It was a big deal because the dates in question have subsequently gone extinct:

Scientists have grown a tree from what may be the oldest seed ever germinated.

The new sapling was sprouted from a 2,000-year-old date palm excavated in Masada, the site of a cliff-side fortress in Israel where ancient Jews are said to have killed themselves to avoid capture by Roman invaders.

Dubbed the "Methuselah Tree" after the oldest person in the Bible, the new plant has been growing steadily, and after 26 months, the tree was nearly four-feet (1.2 meters) tall.

The species of tree, called the Judean date, (Phoenix dactylifera L.), is now extinct in Israel, but researchers are hoping that by reviving the plant they may be able to study its medicinal uses.

...

The seeds were excavated about 40 years ago, along with skeletons of those who died during the siege. Since then, the seeds had been languishing in a drawer until Sallon and her team decided to attempt to grow them anew.

They turned the project over to plant specialist Elaine Solowey at the Arava Institute of the Environment in Kibbutz Ketura, Israel. She pretreated the seeds in fertilizers and hormone-rich solution, and then planted them. So far, Methuselah is the only one to sprout.

I got curious how the tree was doing, and it turns out, it's doing really good!  It's ten feet tall and making viable pollen.  There's no current photo (just one from about the time of the first article)  but the even better news is that the same researcher has germinated seeds from other excavations and has female trees growing now also:

A male date palm tree named Methuselah that sprouted from a 2,000-year-old seed nearly a decade ago is thriving today, according to the Israeli researcher who is cultivating the historic plant.

...

"He is a big boy now," says Elaine Solowey, the director of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies at Kibbutz Ketura in Israel.

"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."

...

In the years since Methuselah first sprouted, Solowey has successfully germinated a handful of other date palms from ancient seeds recovered at archaeological sites around the Dead Sea. "I'm trying to figure out how to plant an ancient date grove," she says.

To do that, she'll need to grow a female plant from an ancient seed as a mate for Methuselah. So far, at least two of the other ancient seeds that have sprouted are female.

If Solowey succeeds, she notes, "we would know what kind of dates they ate in those days and what they were like. That would be very exciting."

...

Genetic tests indicate that Methuselah is most closely related to an ancient variety of date palm from Egypt known as Hayany, which fits with a legend that says dates came to Israel with the children of the Exodus, Solowey says.

"It is pretty clear that Methuselah is a western date from North Africa rather than from Iraq, Iran, Babylon," she explains. "You can't confirm a legend, of course."

In addition to Solowey's hopes of establishing an orchard of ancient dates, she and colleagues are interested in studying the plants to see if they have any unique medicinal properties.

The other date palms sprouted from ancient seeds look similar to Methuselah; distinguishing characteristics, Solowey says, include a sharp angle between the fronds and spine.

"A lot of people have kind of forgotten about Methuselah," Solowey says. "He is actually a really pretty tree."

Seeds are amazing! Thank you for sharing that article, I had never seen that before, very interesting. I always keep my seeds longer than they are "supposed" to be good for, and normally have pretty good success with them, granted they are only a couple of years out-of-date and not 2,000! Here I have things popping up all over my yard, I sometimes think the squirrels plant more than I do. I'm a big fan of free plants, but I always feel bad when one comes in that doesn't fit the space, I don't have the heart normally to kill the plant. However, I can typically find a nice spot somewhere in my city to "relocate" them to.

Here's an update on those cool date palms (yes, I couldn't resist the pun!)



And an article about them: https://www.science.org/content/article/dead-sea-dates-grown-2000-year-old-seeds

This article: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/tree-grown-2000-year-old-seed-has-reproduced-180954746/
mentions that these are not the oldest seeds that have been germinated, as "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."

So Dan Boone's thoughts that the chestnut seed that germinated on his land, may well have been sitting dormant in the soil for decades, seems quite plausible. I have been told that Scotch Broom seeds are viable for 60 years in my area, but that's a long way short of 2000 years.

Thanks for sharing this fascinating article about growing 2000 year old seeds it's amazing 👏

...and now I don't feel as bad about not disposing of my 10 year old seeds!

This is a wonderful share! thank you

I tried to sow 5 year old seeds....they got these really odd bugs on them so I used DE on them.  I dnt know HOW the buggies got to them as I live in the rural mountains......interesting thread you started!  Joel posted a video on how he bought land, then pigs, and the 'running' around of the pigs brought back VERY OLD grasses!  Very cool.

Janice Cohoon wrote:Thanks for sharing this fascinating article about growing 2000 year old seeds it's amazing 👏

YES! I have a 15 y/o pack of milkweed / pollinator flower seeds that I've been saving for when I find the time to clear out some brush on the property. Guess there's no rush 😎

Fae Right wrote:I tried to sow 5 year old seeds....they got these really odd bugs on them so I used DE on them.  I dnt know HOW the buggies got to them as I live in the rural mountains......interesting thread you started!  Joel posted a video on how he bought land, then pigs, and the 'running' around of the pigs brought back VERY OLD grasses!  Very cool.

It's amazing how bugs can find their favorite treats and call all their friends to tell them about it, and then plant their babies to be in the ground where your plants are, so they can grow up right where the feast is likely to be next season...

Ahh bugs. Amazing creatures. Might not have much to do with the age of your seeds though.

For example I noticed this year that my edamame were getting eaten by some sort of bean pest that I never had before. I thought it was the variety until I realized my neighbor (a farmer) was having all his bean plants assaulted by way larger hordes of the same pest. I now assume they were mostly after his crops and found my little patch because it happened to be nearby.

So many factors it can be hard to pin down.

Actually funny I mentioned that edamame example because the edamame seeds I planted that got preyed on were new. The ones I planted last season were 12 years old and grew really well without any pest damage.

My story of regrowth is not nearly as exciting but I used to work at a nature conservancy.
Over 100 years ago, the river that we were conserving had begun to be used as a dumping ground for construction demolition. So, lots of concrete, rebar, trash, you name it. Over the years, they pretty much filled the river bed with debris for miles.
Finally, The dumping of construction debris was outlawed and the river just sat there polluted for many years. Eventually, the environmentally conscious contingent realized that the river had been an important part of the ecosystem before the pollution began and it needed to be restored. They started a grassroots movement and eventually established a conservancy, which gathered motion and funding until large equipment was able to come in and start hauling the debris away.
They started with a quarter-mile section of the river and got everything removed. Literally days after the riverbed was once again exposed, the native willows that had been buried for over 100 years under megatons of trash and debris, began to sprout. The staff stood looking at the willows and cried.

I want to make sure everyone here knows about the Beal Seed Experiment that's been going on since 1879! They're testing seeds every 20 years to see what will still germinate (the seeds are buried in a secret location on the MSU campus between germinations).  

https://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2021/unearthing-a-scientific-mystery

Sarah Lennie wrote:I want to make sure everyone here knows about the Beal Seed Experiment that's been going on since 1879! They're testing seeds every 20 years to see what will still germinate (the seeds are buried in a secret location on the MSU campus between germinations).  

https://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2021/unearthing-a-scientific-mystery

Excellent article! That research is an excellent example of the benefits of long-term research and forward thinking. Too often, humans plan on too short a time scale, and Professor Beal was able to go beyond that and create a legacy that isn't over yet.