After 2,000 Years, These Seeds Have Finally Sprouted
Six date seeds as old as the Dead Sea Scrolls are now flourishing as trees on a kibbutz.
Their names are Adam, Jonah, Uriel, Boaz, Judith, and Hannah, and their ages are—well, actually, this one’s a bit complicated.
Adam, Jonah, Uriel, Boaz, Judith, and Hannah are date-palm trees, and although they were all planted in recent years, the seeds from which they germinated all came from ancient archaeological sites. These seeds, according to radiocarbon dating, were about 2,000 years old. They had waited two millennia to sprout.
The seeds of Judean date palms turn out to have remarkable longevity. A team led by Sarah Sallon, which planted these six trees, first tried in 2005 to
