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
Famous quotes containing the words judean, date and/or palm:
“Then must you speak
Of one that loved not wisely but too well;
Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought,
Perplexed in the extreme; of one whose hand,
Like the base Judean threw a pearl away
Richer than all his tribe.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“A preschool child does not emerge from your toddler on a given date or birthday. He becomes a child when he ceases to be a wayward, confusing, unpredictable and often balky person-in-the- making, and becomes a comparatively cooperative, eager-and-easy-to-please real human being—at least 60 per cent of the time.”
—Penelope Leach (20th century)
“How did you get in the Navy? How did you get on our side? Ah, you ignorant, arrogant, ambitious—keeping sixty two men in prison cause you got a palm tree for the work they did. I don’t know which I hate worse, you or that malignant growth that stands outside your door. How did you ever get command of a ship? I realize in wartime they have to scrape the bottom of the barrel. But where’d they ever scrape you up?”
—Frank S. Nugent (1908–1965)