Many Regular Readers,

will know I am trying to grow some cactus, 

from some seeds we bought at the plant market, some are growing but some are not so far, but from what I can read on the Internet some seeds will take 3 or more months to germinate, but how long can you keep a seed for and it will still be viable? would you believe over 2,000 years! the Judean date palm tree became extinct by 500 AD, we tend to believe that when a species goes extinct, it is never coming back, but that belief doesn’t take into account how long seeds can remain dormant and stay viable, during excavations at the site of Herod the Great's palace in Israel in the early 1960's, archaeologists unearthed a small stockpile of seeds stowed in a clay jar dating back 2,000 years, for the next four decades, the ancient seeds were kept in a drawer at Tel Aviv's Bar-Ilan University, but then, in 2005, botanical researcher Elaine Solowey decided to plant one and see what, if anything, would sprout, 'I assumed the food in the seed would be no good after all that time, how could it be?' said Solowey, She was soon proven wrong, the resulting tree is named Methuselah, ten years later, it is not only thriving, it has produced pollen, which has been used to germinate seeds on a wild date palm, so there is still hope for the non-germinating seeds that I have.