How scientists brought 30,000-year-old flower back to life (2024)

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How scientists brought 30,000-year-old flower back to life? ›

In what is being hailed as the oldest successful regeneration of a living plant, researchers from the Russian Academy of Sciences used cells from a 30,000-year-old plant buried in permafrost to create living seedlings. One of the plants regenerated from Pleistocene Age fruit tissue.

The silene stenophylla, a native plant from Serbia with white flowers, was revived from 32,000-year-old seeds by Russian scientists some years ago. Details of their achievement were published in the paper titled 'Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences'.

A few years ago in northeastern Siberia, Russian scientists uncovered a rare trove of immaculately frozen Arctic squirrel burrows dating back to the Ice Age. Inside they found buried seeds, including the fruit of a flower called the narrow-leafed campion.

Dead for 32,000 Years, an Arctic Plant Is Revived. Living plants have been generated from the fruit of a little arctic flower, the narrow-leafed campion, that died 32,000 years ago, a team of Russian scientists reports.

A Russian team discovered a seed cache of Silene stenophylla, a flowering plant native to Siberia, that had been buried by an Ice Age squirrel near the banks of the Kolyma River (map). Radiocarbon dating confirmed that the seeds were 32,000 years old.

To revive the plant, you can soak it in water and then adopt a predictable watering schedule that uses the same amount of water each time. Remove dead leaves: Improper care may cause most leaves on the plant to die, and it's usually best to remove leaves that have become entirely brown.

Two thousand years after the original supply of silphion was cut off, the legendary plant may have reemerged only to face a threat from its ancient nemesis: human appetite. For the time being, numbers are so low that Ferula drudeana officially qualifies as a critically endangered species.

Smarty Plants has found the Himalayn lily (Cardiocrinum giganteum) that flowers after seven years of growth. Here are photos of the Himalayan lily.

The rare Youtan Poluo or Udumbara flower, which, according to Buddhist legend, only blooms every 3,000 years, measures just 1mm in diametre.

The agave americana plant is known as a century plant because it typically blooms once every 100 years at the end of its life cycle.

What is the rarest flower in the world? ›

The Middlemist Red Camellia, or Camellia japonica 'Middlemist's Red,' is an exceptionally rare flower with vibrant pinkish-red petals. With only two known living specimens in the world, both located in New Zealand and the United Kingdom, it holds the title of the rarest flowering plant on Earth.

However, it was demised after being transported from China to England even after being in its local habitat, so the only answer that would make sense is that it was over cultivated. That is why it is no longer in the wild and is now being captivated.

Thirty thousand years after their burial on the Siberian tundra, immature fruits have been cultivated into small, weedy plants — the oldest successful regeneration of a living plant from ancient tissue. The plants, Silene stenophylla, grew and produced lacy white flowers.

Unlike methods considered for animal de-extinction, which can splice ancient animal DNA with that of close living relatives or selective back-breeding, seeds or spores are the only way to scientifically resurrect extinct plants, Albrecht explained.

Like a science fiction time traveler, an arctic plant of the late Pleistocene age, over 31,000 years old, was resurrected after a long frozen sleep. Narrow-leafed campion is a small plant whose modern relatives are found in eastern Russia and northern Japan.

Old seeds from herbaria have been successfully germinated, but there are as yet no documented examples of plant de-extinction using seeds from herbarium specimens. One major complication is that little is known about the habits and preferences of such rare and often genetically unique creatures.

Given optimum conditions, some plants can live forever. It takes a change in external conditions to finish them off. Annual plants, however, usually die soon after seeding.