daniel
06-17-2005, 08:17 AM
Date-palm seed sprouts after 2,000 years in desert
June 12, 2005
By STEVEN ERLANGER The New York Times
JERUSALEM — Israeli doctors and scientists have succeeded in
germinating a date seed that is nearly 2,000 years old.
The seed, nicknamed Methuselah, was taken from an excavation at Masada,
the cliff fortress where, in A.D. 73, 960 Jewish zealots died by their
own hand rather than surrender to a Roman assault. The point is to find
out what was so exceptional about the original date palm of Judea, much
praised in the Bible and the Quran for its shade, food, beauty and
medicinal qualities, but long ago destroyed by the crusaders.
"The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree," says Psalm 92. "They
shall still bring forth fruit in old age. They shall be fat and
flourishing."
Well, we'll see. Dr. Sarah Sallon, who runs a project on medicinal
plants of the Middle East, notes that the date-palm tree in ancient
times symbolized the tree of life. But Dr. Elaine Solowey, who
germinated the seed and is growing it in quarantine, says plants grown
from ancient seeds "usually keel over and die soon," having used most
of their nutrients in remaining alive.
The plant is now 11.8 inches tall and has produced seven leaves, one of
which was removed for DNA testing. Radiocarbon dating in Switzerland on
a snip of the seed showed it to be 1,990 years old, plus or minus 50
years. So the date seed dates from 35 B.C. to A.D. 65, just before the
famed Roman siege.
Three date seeds were taken from Level 34 of the Masada dig. They were
found in a storeroom and are presumably from dates eaten by the
defenders, Sallon says.
Mordechai Kislef, director of botanical archeology at Bar-Ilan
University, had some date seeds from Ehud Netzer,who excavated Masada
in the 1970s.
"They were sitting in a drawer, and when I asked for one, he said,
'You're mad,' but finally gave me three," Sallon said. "Then I gave
them to Elaine, who's an expert on arid agriculture and dates."
Solowey said: "Well, I didn't have much hope that any would come up,
but you know how Sarah is."
Sallon, who is a pediatric gastroenterologist trained at University
College, London, came to Israel 20 years ago. She is the director of
the Louis L. Borick Natural Medicine Research Center at Hadassah
Medical Organization, which she set up 10 years ago to study natural
products and therapies, from Tibetan and Chinese medicine to the
indigenous medicinal plants of the Middle East. The idea is to preserve
these plants and their oral histories in a modernizing region, but also
to domesticate them, evaluate them scientifically and then try to
integrate them into conventional medicine.
Solowey, who teaches agriculture and sustainable farming at the Arava
Institute for Environmental Studies, based at Kibbutz Ketura in the
southern Negev, works on finding new crops for arid and saline areas
like Jordan, Gaza and Morocco. She also works with Sallon to
domesticate indigenous plants that appear to have medicinal uses.
Solowey grew up in the San Joaquin Valley in California and studied
horticulture, then turned away from commercial agriculture in disgust,
coming here in 1971. "I don't come to organic agriculture from the
hippie side, but as a frustrated agricultural scientist," she said.
"We've bred for yield and taste, but not hardiness, so we have a lot of
plants as hardy as French poodles, so we have to spray to protect them,
and then we pay the price," she said. "There isn't a cubic centimeter
of water in the San Joaquin Valley that isn't polluted with something."
She planted the date seeds at the end of January after trying to draw
them out of their deep dormancy. She first soaked the seeds in hot
water to soften the coat, then in an acid rich in hormones, then in an
enzymatic fertilizer made of seaweed and other nutrients.
"I've done other recalcitrant seeds," she said. "It wasn't a project
with a high priority. I had no idea if the food in the seed was still
good, but I put them in new pots in new potting soil and plugged them
into drip irrigation and kind of forgot about them."
About six weeks later, she said, "I saw the earth cracked in a pot and,
much to my astonishment, one of these came up."
The first two leaves looked odd, she said, very flat and pale. "But the
third looked like a date leaf with lines, and every one since has
looked more and more normal — like it had a hard time getting out of
the seed."
Lotus seeds of about 1,200 years of age have been sprouted in China,
and after the Nazis bombed London's Natural History Museum in World War
II and a lot of water was used to put out the fire, seeds of 500 years
of age also germinated.
"But no one had done it from 2,000 years old," Sallon said.
In the time of Pliny, forests of date palms covered the area from Lake
Galilee to the Dead Sea and made Jericho famous; a date palm is
featured on ancient coinage, as it is on the current Israeli 10-shekel
coin.
The date palm symbolized ancient Israel; the honey of "the land of milk
and honey" came from the date. It is praised as a tonic to increase
longevity, as a laxative, as a cure for infections and as an
aphrodisiac, Sallon said. But the dates of Judea were destroyed before
the Middle Ages, and what dates Israel grows now were imported in the
1950s and '60s from California and originated elsewhere in the Middle
East.
The Prophet Muhammad considered the date of great importance for
medicine, food, construction and income, and it is described in the
Quran as a "symbol of goodness" associated with heaven.
Dates need to grow 30 years to reach maturity and can live as long as
200 years.
But it is the female date that is considered holy, and that bears
fruit. "Men are rather superfluous in the date industry," Sallon said.
"OK, I have a date plant," Solowey said. "If it lives, it will be years
before we eat any dates. And that's if it's female. There's a 50-50
chance. And if it's a male, it will just be a curiosity."
June 12, 2005
By STEVEN ERLANGER The New York Times
JERUSALEM — Israeli doctors and scientists have succeeded in
germinating a date seed that is nearly 2,000 years old.
The seed, nicknamed Methuselah, was taken from an excavation at Masada,
the cliff fortress where, in A.D. 73, 960 Jewish zealots died by their
own hand rather than surrender to a Roman assault. The point is to find
out what was so exceptional about the original date palm of Judea, much
praised in the Bible and the Quran for its shade, food, beauty and
medicinal qualities, but long ago destroyed by the crusaders.
"The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree," says Psalm 92. "They
shall still bring forth fruit in old age. They shall be fat and
flourishing."
Well, we'll see. Dr. Sarah Sallon, who runs a project on medicinal
plants of the Middle East, notes that the date-palm tree in ancient
times symbolized the tree of life. But Dr. Elaine Solowey, who
germinated the seed and is growing it in quarantine, says plants grown
from ancient seeds "usually keel over and die soon," having used most
of their nutrients in remaining alive.
The plant is now 11.8 inches tall and has produced seven leaves, one of
which was removed for DNA testing. Radiocarbon dating in Switzerland on
a snip of the seed showed it to be 1,990 years old, plus or minus 50
years. So the date seed dates from 35 B.C. to A.D. 65, just before the
famed Roman siege.
Three date seeds were taken from Level 34 of the Masada dig. They were
found in a storeroom and are presumably from dates eaten by the
defenders, Sallon says.
Mordechai Kislef, director of botanical archeology at Bar-Ilan
University, had some date seeds from Ehud Netzer,who excavated Masada
in the 1970s.
"They were sitting in a drawer, and when I asked for one, he said,
'You're mad,' but finally gave me three," Sallon said. "Then I gave
them to Elaine, who's an expert on arid agriculture and dates."
Solowey said: "Well, I didn't have much hope that any would come up,
but you know how Sarah is."
Sallon, who is a pediatric gastroenterologist trained at University
College, London, came to Israel 20 years ago. She is the director of
the Louis L. Borick Natural Medicine Research Center at Hadassah
Medical Organization, which she set up 10 years ago to study natural
products and therapies, from Tibetan and Chinese medicine to the
indigenous medicinal plants of the Middle East. The idea is to preserve
these plants and their oral histories in a modernizing region, but also
to domesticate them, evaluate them scientifically and then try to
integrate them into conventional medicine.
Solowey, who teaches agriculture and sustainable farming at the Arava
Institute for Environmental Studies, based at Kibbutz Ketura in the
southern Negev, works on finding new crops for arid and saline areas
like Jordan, Gaza and Morocco. She also works with Sallon to
domesticate indigenous plants that appear to have medicinal uses.
Solowey grew up in the San Joaquin Valley in California and studied
horticulture, then turned away from commercial agriculture in disgust,
coming here in 1971. "I don't come to organic agriculture from the
hippie side, but as a frustrated agricultural scientist," she said.
"We've bred for yield and taste, but not hardiness, so we have a lot of
plants as hardy as French poodles, so we have to spray to protect them,
and then we pay the price," she said. "There isn't a cubic centimeter
of water in the San Joaquin Valley that isn't polluted with something."
She planted the date seeds at the end of January after trying to draw
them out of their deep dormancy. She first soaked the seeds in hot
water to soften the coat, then in an acid rich in hormones, then in an
enzymatic fertilizer made of seaweed and other nutrients.
"I've done other recalcitrant seeds," she said. "It wasn't a project
with a high priority. I had no idea if the food in the seed was still
good, but I put them in new pots in new potting soil and plugged them
into drip irrigation and kind of forgot about them."
About six weeks later, she said, "I saw the earth cracked in a pot and,
much to my astonishment, one of these came up."
The first two leaves looked odd, she said, very flat and pale. "But the
third looked like a date leaf with lines, and every one since has
looked more and more normal — like it had a hard time getting out of
the seed."
Lotus seeds of about 1,200 years of age have been sprouted in China,
and after the Nazis bombed London's Natural History Museum in World War
II and a lot of water was used to put out the fire, seeds of 500 years
of age also germinated.
"But no one had done it from 2,000 years old," Sallon said.
In the time of Pliny, forests of date palms covered the area from Lake
Galilee to the Dead Sea and made Jericho famous; a date palm is
featured on ancient coinage, as it is on the current Israeli 10-shekel
coin.
The date palm symbolized ancient Israel; the honey of "the land of milk
and honey" came from the date. It is praised as a tonic to increase
longevity, as a laxative, as a cure for infections and as an
aphrodisiac, Sallon said. But the dates of Judea were destroyed before
the Middle Ages, and what dates Israel grows now were imported in the
1950s and '60s from California and originated elsewhere in the Middle
East.
The Prophet Muhammad considered the date of great importance for
medicine, food, construction and income, and it is described in the
Quran as a "symbol of goodness" associated with heaven.
Dates need to grow 30 years to reach maturity and can live as long as
200 years.
But it is the female date that is considered holy, and that bears
fruit. "Men are rather superfluous in the date industry," Sallon said.
"OK, I have a date plant," Solowey said. "If it lives, it will be years
before we eat any dates. And that's if it's female. There's a 50-50
chance. And if it's a male, it will just be a curiosity."