你有没有想过在冰河时代之前地球上生长着什么?一定有某种类型的植物。
否则史前生物是如何存活下来的?这些植物怎么了?是植物的过度生长将地球推入冰天雪地吗?我们今天享用的一些植物是否可能是前冰河时期植物的残余(甚至可能是突变)?
How long do you think seeds can remain potent? A couple of years? How about 32,000 years? There is a plant whose seeds have beencarbon-dated from the end of the Ice Age: the narrow-leafed campion orSilene stenophylla.
It’s a flowering plant that grows well in the arctic tundra, particularly in Siberia. One ancient squirrel must have scattered some seeds along the banks of the Kolyma River and they actually germinated and grew – 32,000 years later! Now is that cool or what?
If the seeds of this plant are still viable, there must be others — wouldn’t you think? So, how did we learn about these pre-Ice Age seeds? Researchers in the north have been studying the local plant life for some time now. And in places like Siberia and northern Canada, they have discovered some amazing things about the resiliency of some plants.
Until the discovery of 32,000-year-old seeds in the permafrost along the Kolyma River, the oldest known plant to germinate was a date palm grown from2,000-year-old seeds. Pretty amazing.
The landscape was mostly grasslands, cold, and arid. Prehistoric plants have been grown from resurrected plant tissue that was frozen in the permafrost. Growing from prehistoric seeds similarly buried is a bit of an anomaly as seeds don’t generally survive extended periods of time.
Related Post:How to Protect Plants From Frost: 12 Clever Methods That Work
However, perhaps the extremity of the freezing preserved them enough to make them more likely to germinate thousands of years later. As you can imagine, there must be hundreds of thousands of fruits and seeds buried by squirrel-like animals. How many of these will germinate and provide us with a better appreciation and understanding of what grew on Earth prior to this Ice Age?
有趣的是，科学家们多年来一直在研究巨大的水果和种子，希望能让史前植物发芽，比如莎草、北极船坞、高山熊果等。虽然其中一些种子确实开始了发芽过程，但它们摇摇晃晃地死去了，可能是因为不太适应21世纪的土壤。
By using samples of the placental tissue of theS. stenophyllafruit — not so different from the white stuff one finds inside a pepper which holds the seeds — researchers were able to produce shoots in vitro which were then used to propagate plants. And these produced flowers — although the growing time was considerably longer than theS. stenophyllathat currently grows on the banks of the Kolyma River today.
The result? This narrow-leafed plant with tiny flowers grown from pre-Ice Age seeds is now the oldest living multicellular organism on this planet. Pretty amazing! And there’s more. With this success, scientists are hopeful that they might be able to bring to life more pre-Ice Age plants in the future.
There are quite a few to consider, too. Since rodents stashed seeds and fruits in burrows, and these burrows were at the level of the permafrost which caused them to freeze almost instantaneously, there are more than 600,000 fruits and seeds to study.
Other than the novelty of bringing back to life something that was extinct, is there a purpose to this regeneration? Is this plant edible? Does it have medicinal benefits? Well, some plants of theSilenegenusare edible includingS. acaulis,S. dioica, andS. vulgaris. Why? Because they’re all campions with narrow leaves. Usually, the young leaves are boiled and served with butter. Can one assume the same for theS. stenophylla? Time will tell.
I can’t help but wonder if this wonderful regeneration is perhaps too much. Are we opening up a whole new Pandora’s box? What diseases came with these plants? Are they invasive to current species? Too many unanswered questions; too few answers. Whilst sites do advertise the sale ofS. stenophyllaseeds, these are from the plants currently growing, not the regenerated seeds. For now, the 32,000-year-old flower only grows in a laboratory.
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