Seeds 200 years old breathe again!

The BBC reports that some seeds which have been stored away since the time of King George III have been brought to life. Scientists from the Millennium Seed Bank, operated by the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew (near London), have induced seeds from three species to germinate. They had been brought to Britain from South Africa by a Dutch merchant in 1803, and were found in a notebook stored in the British National Archives.

The three successes are a legume, Liparia villosa, and two species not yet identified, one a protea and the other an acacia (pictured on the right).

When the plants are older, the scientists plan to compare the old plants with modern-day equivalents to determine how the species have changed and adapted over the last two centuries.

These are not the oldest seeds ever germinated. Four years ago scientists in the US germinated lotus seeds which had been carbon-dated as 500 years old; more recently, an Israeli team claimed to have grown a date palm from a 2,000 year old seed.