From the AP via USA Today:
WASHINGTON — Just over three years old and about four-feet tall, Methuselah is growing well. "It's lovely," Dr. Sarah Sallon said of the date palm, whose parents may have provided food for the besieged Jews at Masada some 2,000 years ago.
The little tree was sprouted in 2005 from a seed recovered from Masada, where rebelling Jews committed suicide rather than surrender to Roman attackers.
With Dr. Sarah, I think it's lovely, too, that a seed from the time when Jesus walked the earth sprouted with new life. What a wonderful symbol of the Resurrection.
The picture shows the plant at the age of 24 months. It's three years old now and bigger and taller than in the photo.
Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat (or a date palm seed) falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
John 12:24
Photo from MSNBC News by Guy Eisner / Courtesy of Science Magazine
That is so wonderful. But it does make one wonder about the expiration dates on seed packages.
ReplyDeleteLOL, Ruth. It does.
ReplyDeleteWow!!
ReplyDeleteI love that!!!
And what Ruth said!
I love this sort of article. So much better than the Anglican "wars"
ReplyDeleteI read the headline and thought you were talking about my life! ;-)
ReplyDeleteIt is a lovely story. I hope if the palm proves fertile, that he makes its seeds available.
FWIW
jimB
I'm surprised by how quickly that palm is growing. It's hard to believe that photo is of a 2-year-old seedling.
ReplyDeleteIn contrast, I'm growing a Red Sealing Wax Palm (or Lipstick Palm) from a seed. After 4 years it is only about 10 inches tall. But then they don't get as large as the huge date palms anyway. It just about doubled its size last year. I'm hoping it does the same this year. No red yet. That takes a long time. This spring it produced two babies. I'm not quite sure what to do with them, whether to let them stay there or to separate them from the mother plant.
I'm used to delayed gratification in the garden. I've waited as long as 7 years for orchid seedlings to reach blooming size.
I love this kind of story, too.
ReplyDeleteJim! How old are you? Getting close to 900? Wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to buy seeds and grow the palm?
Mike, I'd be inclined to separate the little plants, but I'm no expert. You're a patient man. My daughter tries to grow orchids, but not very seriously.
On my walk the other evening, I met up with an unwelcome Texien, an armadillo. I startled him/her as much as the little critter startled me. The two of us put distance between ourselves and went our separate ways. I thought you'd like to know, even though you're not the blogger with the armadillo gravatar.
I don't know what has happened to my gravatar. It mysteriously went away just about the time other people starting displaying them. Mine is of one of the orchids.
ReplyDeleteYou don't have to worry about armadillos too much. They won't do much damage to you ... but they will damage your garden if they decide it's a good place to hunt for grub worms. You can actually pick them up and they won't harm you. But supposedly they can be carriers of leprosy (although very rarely), so I just leave them alone.
My worst garden pests are squirrels and cats. Squirrels keep planting pecan trees and peanuts. The peanuts aren't bothersome, but the pecan trees seem to have roots that grow to China and are nearly impossible to get rid of. The cats leave other things around. The neighbor across the street feeds all the stray cats in the neighborhood until she can catch them and bring them to no-kill shelters. Some of them are just too cute, but Mr. Harley would never permit us to bring a cat into the house. I'm quite sure of that.
Other than that we have a couple of big ol' creepy possums who live under the tool shed. I don't know why they seem so creepy. Maybe because I only see them at dusk and dawn and because of that really nasty hissing sound they make ... and they do look like giant rats.Red Sealing Wax Palm (or Lipstick Palm)
Come to think of it, we have several other scary things around here. The scariest thing of all is a cute little lizard that is so well camouflaged that you don't see him unless he moves. And of course he never does that unless you down on your hand and knees weeding and your hand happens to come within 3 or 4 inches of him. Then he takes off, just about causing heart failure in hapless nearby humans. I'm not sure what it is. It is speckled and seem to have various shades of gray, back, and blue and can be about 10-12 inches head to end of tail.
I'm just in from fertilizing the orchids and doing various other assorted things. It's way too hot for this time of year. It's like August.
LOL ... that link to the sealing was palm must have still been in the "copy" thing. I didn't notice when it popped into the other post.
ReplyDeleteMike, LOL. I can only imagine what the price of the the seeds from the 2000 year old date palm would cost, if Lipstick Palm seeds are that expensive.
ReplyDeleteI think that price was for one of the plants, not a seed. I'm not sure the seeds are as expensive as that article implies. I've seen packs of seed for sale at prices less than $5 for a pack of a dozen or so seeds. Mine was a gift from a friend from Panama who went down there for a visit and just harvested some seed from a tree.
ReplyDeleteThis gives me hope that life can come even after a long wait and out of a place of anguish and terror.
ReplyDeleteRemember, they had numerous seeds. This was the only one that germinated, so it's a rare survivor.Think how long they'll have to wait for dates!
ReplyDeleteWe ate the first radish from our garden today.
IT
Could Methuselah be a miracle plant? ;o)
ReplyDeleteIT, how was the radish? Delicious, I'll bet.