When I’d heard years ago that a lotus seed from China had germinated after laying low for 1300 years I was pretty amazed. That was from seed collected in 1982 when Shen and Miller at UCLA sprouted a number of seeds that were radiocarbon dated to be anywhere from 95 to 1288 years old, plus or minus a few years.

But when I heard the news making the rounds now that a two-millennium-old date palm seed from Masada had sprouted, I was definitely impressed.

Studies of the lotus plants grown from the old seeds showed that all were abnormal, a fact that the scientists attributed to radiation-induced mutations that occurred as a result of naturally-occurring radiation in the soil where they were found. The date palm–which has been dubbed the “Methusalah tree”– however, has been growing spunkily since it was sprouted in 2005, and is now five feet tall. If that palm doesn’t take the cake in the more-heirloom-than-thou plant contest, I don’t know what would!