« Christina Aguilera music used as torture in Gitmo | Main | Supreme Court ignores constitution, sets dangerous precedent »

June 13, 2005

2,000 year-old seed from extinct date tree sprouts

Myopic Zeal is reporting that the original date palm of Judea, praised in the Bible and the Koran for its shade, food, beauty and medicinal qualities, was destroyed long ago by the crusaders. However, some 2,000 year old seeds were recovered from an excavation at Masada in the Judean Desert of Israel in the 1970's. The Masada is a cliff fortress where, in A.D. 73, 960 Jewish zealots died by their own hand, rather than surrender to a Roman assault. Recently, one of the 2,000 year old seeds, nicknamed Methuselah, was planted and has sprouted into a healthy, growing date tree. It's a foot tall so far, and growing. If it's a female date tree, then it should produce dates when it reaches maturity in 30 years.

Technorati tags:
Delicious tags:

Folksonomy:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share web pages.
 
digg  Furl  Spurl  Reddit  blinkbits  BlinkList  blogmarks  connotea  De.lirio.us  Fark  feedmelinks  LinkaGoGo  Ma.gnolia  NewsVine  Netvouz  RawSugar  scuttle  Shadows  Simpy  Smarking  TailRank  Wists  YahooMyWeb

Posted by Peenie Wallie on June 13, 2005 at 01:23 PM

Comments

Post a comment




Remember Me?

(you may use HTML tags for style)