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)
“Ev’rythin’s up to date in Kansas City.”
—Oscar Hammerstein II (1895–1960)
“The oft-repeated Roman story is written in still legible characters in every quarter of the Old World, and but today, perchance, a new coin is dug up whose inscription repeats and confirms their fame. Some “Judæa Capta,” with a woman mourning under a palm tree, with silent argument and demonstration confirms the pages of history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)