OLDEST-KNOWN SEED

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 28, 23 September 1946, Page 8

OLDEST-KNOWN SEED

DISCOVERY IN ENGLAND s SOME FANCIFUL STORIES The German bomb which, falling ’ near the Natural History Museum, has closed it ever since to all but students and its staff, opened up at the same time the discovery of the oldest-known living seed. It was found among the broken glass by Dr. John Ramsbottom, the keeper , of Botany, in the British Museum Sloane Collection and must therefore be 240 years old, states an English exchange. Dr. Ramsbottom planted it, a lotus seed, and has exhibited it, still living and growing, to the Linnean Society. This disclosure gives a new I date to the years a seed can survive. This should not revive, however,

belief in fanciful stories about ancient living seeds. Those about wheat grains taken from Egyptian tombs or the granaries __ of Herculaneum were long ago exploded. They were frauds designed to deceive credulous visitors. No wheat grain is alive after 16 years. Other such deceptions suffered the same exposure. Mr Gordon Maskell has recorded that two raspberry. plants in the Oxford Botanic Gardens were once falsely said to have been grown from seeds taken from a skeleton in a Dorsetshire barrow.

Forty years ago Professor Becquerel, examining 135 seeds in the Herbarium of the Paris Natural History, Museum, found that the old-

est living survivor was 87 years old. A later find from China germinated after'' 147 years. The age at which a seed can still survive, therefore, is still rising; but at present the 240 year old lotus holds the field.