Extinct tree grows anew from ancient jar of seeds unearthed by archaeologists

[Rstrstx]

11. Some insight to dates (which never went extinct)

They may have been destroyed in one local area but the trees have been around for millennia. Dates are dioecious (separate male and female plants, like people), the female trees bear the fruit while the male plants supply the pollen. Given that Phoenix (the botanical name for date palms) are dioecious and complete whores - they'll cross with any of their kinfolk - it's possible the edible date is some sort of hybrid or a distinct ecotype that was discovered by man and subsequently cultivated, possibly enhanced by eugenics.

The better edible dates have to be grown from offshoots of specific cultivars (e.g. Deglet Noor, Medjool), the male parent usually doesn't matter. I'm not sure how long ago clonal propagation first began but it's been many many centuries if not millennia. It's not hard to do: a hammer and chisel can split a pup off of the parent plant at the base and it'll easily grow into a clone of its parent once new roots are established.

Still, random seedling female dates will often have tasty fruit - down here in South Texas you can pick up a ripe date and it usually isn't half bad even if it didn't come from some fancy pants cultivar (though a number can taste pretty underwhelming. Hybrid dates occasionally have decent tasting fruit but it's pretty rare). From the article it sounds like the Judean dates were just grown wild and the fruit was simply gathered off female plants, presumably the ones that tasted good.

The article stated that the sex of the tree should be known by 2012 (no word yet?), if it's female it'd be interesting to see what kind of taste it has. Unfortunately with only one tree it will be impossible to bring this particular strain back into horticulture without another tree of the opposite sex; at best you'll get a half-Judean date palm. I'm sure extensive genetic analysis of this plant will be conducted, in fact I believe the article stated as much. There may be strains of dates around somewhere that are very close to the ancient Judean strain.

I'm pretty sure this is the same tree I read about not that long ago, and it wasn't anywhere near as simple as just picking a seed out of a jar and planting it; very extensive preparation and treatment of the seed was done in a laboratory to enhance its chances of germinating. Luckily it worked, they didn't just throw the seed in a pot and stick it out by the back door to see if it sprouted.

Always neat to read about these things.