2000 Year Old Seed Germinates

[Brett_Tabke]

This is so awesome:

[newscientist.com...]

A date palm seed some 2000 years old – preserved by nothing more than storage in hot and dry conditions – has germinated, making it the oldest seed in the world to do so.

The ancient seed was found along with several others in the 1960s in the Masada fortress on the edge of the Dead Sea in Israel. Recently, three were planted in soil and one germinated.

[King_Fisher]

I guess there is still hope for Grandpa!? :o)

...KF

[grandpa]

There's always hope for...

I'm trying to germinate a couple of apple seeds, considering the price of apples these days! I think they are much more modern, though. The miracle will be if I can grow a tree to produce a fruit.

[londrum]

i've got a couple of hundred-year-old tins of spam underneath my bed (from my old student days)... i might dig them out now and see what they are like

[engine]

That's amazing the seeds remained viable for such a long period of time - incredible!

[lawman]

If I ever come across one I think I'll eat it to see if it makes me viable for a couple thousand years.

[wheel]

>>>I'm trying to germinate a couple of apple seeds,

Will apple seeds germinate? I've always been under the impression that they won't. Or if they do, they won't be the same type as the original apple. That's why apple trees are created by splicing branches from an original tree.

Could be wrong - but that's my impression. Too lazy to google it :).

[grandpa]

No need to Google it. I have a couple of seeds that are sprouting after a few days. I'm in too much of a rush to wait a couple thousand years.

I don't know how they couldn't be the same type. They came from the apple.

[deejay]

grandpa - they won't likely be the same type as most commercial apple varieties aren't self-fertile.

The orchards have to plant other compatible varieties as pollinators - either as single trees dabbed through the apple blocks or as neighbouring rows.

Your apple may be Royal Gala from a Royal Gala tree, but it will have been pollinated with, say, Cripps Pink and the seeds resulting will be a crossbreed of those two varieties.

[deejay]

and wheel is right- new trees are created by budding, grafting, cloning... any number of methods that ensure the same genetic composition as the parent, but not by seed.

Doesn't mean you won't get a perfectly acceptable apple tree from your seeds - you may even have something quite special - but don't count on it being anything much like the parent.

[httpwebwitch]

Fascinating.

Bananas are like that. The Cavendish breed is all the same plant, massively reproduced by splicing and cloning; it's so infertile it doesn't even bother making seeds any more (old, wild bananas have little seeds)

closer to being on topic, I've never had any luck germinating seeds over 1 year old.
I scooped and saved the seeds from a special breed of pumpkin last year, one of those wrinkly ones with the really sweet, dark red flesh; none of them germinated :(