The Judean date palm is a cultivar of the date palm (Phoenix dactylifera).
Prized for its beauty, shade, and medicinal properties, the cultivar was thought to have become extinct sometime around AD 150. However, in 2005, a preserved 2,000-year-old seed sprouted. It was at the time the oldest known human-assisted germination of a seed (surpassed in 2012 by a 32,000-year-old arctic flower). The palm, named Methuselah (not to be confused with a bristlecone pine tree of the same name), was about 1.5 m (5 ft) tall in June 2008.As of November 2011, it is reported at 2.5m height, and transplanted from pot to earth.
Read more about Judean Date Palm: History, Germination of 2000 Year-old Seed
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Richer than all his tribe.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
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—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)