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January 14, 2011
The oldest seed ever grown?
Scientists germinate a 2,000-year-old date palm from Masada.
SYBIL KAPLAN
When I started to think of what theme would best represent Tu b’Shevat for an article this year, an idea popped up that soon led to Dr. Sarah Sallon, director of the Louis Borick Natural Medicine Research Centre at the Hadassah Medical Centre in Jerusalem. What best symbolizes the holiday known in the Talmud as Rosh Hashanah l’Ilanot, the New Year of the Trees, more than dates?
Why “new year”? Because Jewish literature of the sixth to 11th centuries identifies Tu b’Shevat as the day on which the fate of the trees and fruit is decided. The Mishnah, that part of the Talmud that explains, interprets and analyzes the laws of the Torah, indicates the holiday’s significance as a day meant to link the Jew to Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel.
According to Sallon, “in 2005, we were interested in rejuvenating lost flora of Eretz Yisrael. One of the lost flora is the Judaean date. I was discussing with some scientists about their work, trying to extract DNA from ancient seeds. I said, if we had ancient seeds, why couldn’t we grow them?”
Masada also came up in conversation. Masada is the site of a palace built by King Herod by the Dead Sea 2,046 years ago, then inhabited by 1,000 Jews who took refuge there and ended up committing suicide to avoid capture by the Romans in 70 CE. The site was excavated in the 1960s by archeologist Yigal Yadin, and three date palm seeds were found. These seeds were put into the custodianship of Prof. E. Netzer, who was in charge of Yadin’s collection. These were stored at Tel Aviv’s Bar Ilan University with Prof. Mordechai Kislev, who identified them.
Sallon’s colleague, Dr. Elaine Solowey, botanist of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies at Kibbutz Ketura, took the three 2,000 year old seeds and planted them. After eight weeks, one seed successfully germinated and was named Methuselah.
The first leaves had white spots because of a lack of chlorophyll. However, after 26 months, the plant showed normal development.
I was only permitted to see photographs on a computer, as the exact location of the now two-metre-high tree is a secret. Sallon said it is at a “protected, quarantined site,” and that she visits Methuselah “quite frequently,” every few months.
“It looks like a regular date palm,” said Sallon, in her office at Hadassah Hospital, Ein Karem, “but we have to look more at its DNA. When we compared it to the DNA of a regular cultivated species of dates, it closely resembled the Egyptian type.”
Right now, Methuselah is simply growing and not showing its sexual characterisetics. Its sex will not be known for a few years.
“If it’s female, we’ll call it Mrs. Methuselah,” mused Sallon. Potentially, it could be fertilized by the pollen of a male date and possibly produce dates.
This project is part of Sallon’s works, looking at medicinal plants of Israel. The Louis Borick Natural Medicine Research Centre, which is funded entirely by donations, researches natural medicines and, according to Sallon, some of “the most important natural medicines comes from plants.”
The centre’s staff of 20 to 30 people collects seeds, grows plants and harvests and tests them. The Dalai Lama has visited the centre several times because they have done a great deal of work on plants native to Tibet.
“We have an interest in the highest place [Tibet] and the lowest place [the Dead Sea],” said Sallon. “We grow plants at Kibbutz Ketura and test them at Hadassah School of Medicine, using ancient and historical sources like Maimonides and Ibn Sana.”
They translate ancient manuscripts on medicinal plants from Latin, Greek, Aramaic, Arabic, Hebrew and the Romance languages, she continued. “We use the information to pinpoint what we want to test. Some have never been translated before. We call it ‘data mining.’”
Currently, researchers at the centre are screening medicinal uses for cancerous tumors and Parkinson’s (which is not named in the ancient writings but whose symptoms are described), as well as Alzheimer’s (described in these sources as “memory loss”). Also in those ancient texts, melancholy becomes today’s depression and coughing up blood becomes today’s tuberculosis.
Recently, the centre isolated a plant for use with Parkinson’s and conducted some early-stage testing.
“It shows an interesting effect in the laboratory,” Sallon said. “We use the ancient language of the healers and apply them to modern conditions. Looking at the date (Methuselah) and other ancient medicines is part of searching for [treatments]. It’s so precious to us.”
Sallon was born in London and holds a bachelor of science, a bachelor of medicine and a bachelor of surgery degree. She is also a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, has a diploma from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and is a member of the Royal College of Physicians in Pediatrics. She has held positions with Hadassah University Hospital since 1983 and has been director of the Natural Medicine Research Centre since 1994.
Sallon has worked at hospitals in Hong Kong; Bombay, Hyderabad and Calcutta, India; Wallo province in Ethiopia; and Nepal. She has done research into traditional medicine in India, Victoria, B.C., and Israel.
Sybil Kaplan is a book reviewer, journalist, lecturer, food columnist, cookbook author and feature writer living in Jerusalem.
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