Methuselah is twelve

MASADA DATE PALM UPDATE: KETURA, ISRAEL: Judean Date Palm Methuselah. This tree was extinct for a thousand years before sprouting again from a 2,000-year-old seed (Atlas Obscura).

One soon sprouted into a sapling. Twelve years later, it is more than 10 feet tall. A male of its species, it was nicknamed Methuselah after the longest-lived person in the Bible. It is the oldest known germination of a seed in the world.

At first, the leaves were plagued with white blotches, suggesting insufficient nutrients, but eventually the plant thrived. It first flowered in 2011 and it produces pollen, which enables it to reproduce with modern date palms, as it did in 2015. It is predicted it will generate fruit by 2022.

I hope so.

Background here and here and links. I noted the story originally, back in 2005, here.