Tree Weaver

2,000-year-old seeds were discovered in 1963 inside an ancient jar in Israel. They were planted in 2005 and a tree that had been extinct for over 1800 years sprouted.

Sarah Sallon, a medical doctor who worked at the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem, went looking for medicinal plants in Jerusalem. And she found lots of them. But she also heard about ancient medicinal plants that had disappeared.

“They’re just historical ghosts,” she says. “Like the famous date plantations along the Dead Sea, 2,000 years ago — described by Pliny; described by Josephus, the first-century historian. They’re not there anymore. They just vanished!”

Sallon realized, though, that seeds from those trees still existed. They’d been recovered from archaeological sites. So she went to the archaeologists and proposed planting some of those seeds, to see if they’d grow again. It didn’t go well at first. “They thought I was mad!” she says. “They didn’t think that this was even conceivable.”

But she kept pushing, and eventually persuaded a few of them to provide some seeds to try this with. More than a decade ago, she and Elaine Solowey, a researcher at the Arava Institute of Environmental Studies, planted some of these ancient palm seeds. “Six weeks later, little green shoots appeared!” she says.

One tree grew ~ A male date palm tree named Methuselah, after Noah’s grandfather, the oldest man in the Bible. This palm sprouted from a 2,000-year-old seed nearly a decade ago and is thriving today, according to the Israeli researcher who is cultivating the historic plant.

The plant was sprouted in a laboratory in 2005, and when a National Geographic news story about the event resurfaced this week on the social media website Reddit, we decided to check in on Methuselah and see how it’s doing. “He is a big boy now,” says Elaine Solowey,

“He is over three meters [ten feet] tall, he’s got a few offshoots, he has flowers, and his pollen is good,” she says. “We pollinated a female with his pollen, a wild [modern] female, and yeah, he can make dates.”

In 2005, Solowey, an expert in desert agriculture, germinated the ancient seed, which was recovered decades earlier from an archaeological excavation at Masada, a historic mountainside fortress. The seed had spent years in a researcher’s drawer in Tel Aviv.

In the years since Methuselah first sprouted, Solowey has successfully germinated a handful of other date palms from ancient seeds recovered at archaeological sites around the Dead Sea. “I’m trying to figure out how to plant an ancient date grove,” she says.

To do that, she’ll need to grow a female plant from an ancient seed as a mate for Methuselah. So far, at least two of the other ancient seeds that have sprouted are female.

If Solowey succeeds, she notes, “we would know what kind of dates they ate in those days and what they were like. That would be very exciting.”

In 2012, scientists in Russia were able to grow a plant from 32,000-year-old seeds that had been buried by an Ice Age squirrel in Siberia. (See “32,000-Year-Old Plant Brought Back to Life—Oldest Yet.”)

Genetic tests indicate that Methuselah is most closely related to an ancient variety of date palm from Egypt known as Hayany, which fits with a legend that says dates came to Israel with the children of the Exodus, Solowey says.

“It is pretty clear that Methuselah is a western date from North Africa rather than from Iraq, Iran, Babylon,” she explains. “You can’t confirm a legend, of course.”

In addition to Solowey’s hopes of establishing an orchard of ancient dates, she and colleagues are interested in studying the plants to see if they have any unique medicinal properties.

The other date palms sprouted from ancient seeds look similar to Methuselah; distinguishing characteristics, Solowey says, include a sharp angle between the fronds and spine.

“A lot of people have kind of forgotten about Methuselah,” Solowey says. “He is actually a really pretty tree.”

When Sallon talks about the possibility of eating dates just like the ones that people in the bible ate, her voice fills with wonder and expectation. According to ancient writers, she says, these dates “were known for their wonderful sweetness, their very large size, and their ability to be stored for a long time, so they actually were exported around the Roman empire.”

Now they may live again, which Sallon takes as a sign of hope for the world. She’s written a children’s book about this, telling the story from the date’s point of view, and hopes to get it published soon.

Historically

In1963, archaeologists began a dig around King Herod the Great’s palace at the ancient fortress of Masada. The ruins sit atop a jutting plateau of rock in Southern Israel, which overlooks the Judaean Desert to one side and the Dead Sea to the other. It’s naturally fortified by steep cliffs rising some 1,300 feet. About 100 miles north lay the Jordan Valley, with its forests of 40-foot date palms, a medicinal fruit tree that symbolized life and prosperity.

In order to feed hundreds of subjects, Herod had dates and other delicacies shipped to the remote mountaintop — peaches, figs, olives, almonds, wine, and birds for meat, according to Roman historian Flavius Josephus. Then in 73 CE, the Romans attacked the fortress. The siege lasted a full year, during which time the Jews subsisted on what jarred food remained. Ultimately, rather than surrender, they set fire to Herod’s citadel and committed mass suicide. Most of the buildings were left to decay — along with a few tiny seeds that waited inside their warm jar.

Two thousand years later, excavators discovered that curious clay jar buried deep in hot, dry dirt. It was undisturbed and intact. Inside they found several date palm seeds. Back at the lab, scientists broke off tiny chips of the seeds’ shells; carbon dating estimated their origin between 155 BC and 64 CE.

Both the Bible and the Koran praise the date palm. The tree provided shade, food, and medicine. In the “land of milk and honey,” dates were the honey. The fruit was large, dark, and very sweet, says Solowey. It had good “shelf life” and was in high demand in Rome.

“Roman emperors wanted Judean dates for their tables,” Solowey told Timeline. “Since they had absolutely nothing else good to say about Jews, Judea, or Judaism, I assume they were very good dates.”

The ancient fruit made tonics for longevity, laxatives, and aphrodisiacs; lore claims they could cure infections. The date was so important to the region that it featured on ancient coinage, and even on Israel’s 10-shekel coin today. But 800 years ago, crusaders destroyed the last Judean palm and rendered the plant extinct. Dr. Sallon hopes Methuselah is the key to medicinal remedies once lost to history.

“Within a 2,000-year-old seed, a germ of life was still alive,” wrote Jane Goodall in her 2013 book Seeds of Hope, “waiting, waiting, waiting for the right conditions to wake, like Rip Van Winkle, into a strange and different world.”

https://timeline.com/methuselah-judean-date-palm-b3782ff1d731

https://www.instagram.com/reel/ChnHj8YpT8_/?igshid=MDJmNzVkMjY=

Did Scotland axe 14 million trees to make way for wind farms.

In recent days, hundreds of social media posts have alleged that 14 million trees were chopped down in Scotland to make way for wind farms. “Environmental madness”, one widely shared tweet reads. “Scotland launched a number of wind turbine projects in an obsessive quest to cash in on renewables.

“The real tragedy is the destruction of 14 million trees, the mind-numbing hypocrisy of climate zealots, a hoax created by the UN.” Other posts, meanwhile, suggest the 14 million trees had been cut down “since 2020”.

But that’s not the full story.

According to the government agency Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS), 14 million trees were cut down to make way for wind farms in Scotland, but this had occurred over 20 years.

Meanwhile, over the same period (from 2000), 272 million trees were planted across the country.

That crucial fact is missing from an article published by the website Energy News Beat, which appears to have driven the recent surge in social media activity.

Notably, the omission comes despite the article drawing heavily on a two-year-old story published by Scottish news site The Herald, in which an FLS spokesman was quoted as saying: “That figure for felled trees should also be contrasted with that for the number of trees planted in Scotland over the years 2000 – 2019, a total of 272,000,000, and renewable energy developments fit well with this.”

He added: “The amount of woodland removed across Scotland’s national forests and land, managed by FLS, for wind farm development is not even 1 per cent of the total woodland area”, while the 14 million trees were a commercial crop that would ultimately have been felled for timber.

An FLS spokesman also explained that the 272 million trees planted did not include restock planting on commercial sites. In addition, the Scottish government requires that developers that fell trees to make way for wind farms must carry out compensatory planting elsewhere.

“On average, FLS will plant 25 million trees every year as restock planting of commercial crops,” he said.

So you have it and the debates continue to follow.

COP26 attendees, including Scotland, swore to end deforestation by 2030.

Scotland and all other attendees at the recent COP26 gathering agreed to stop all deforestation efforts by the year 2030. Scotland apparently took this to mean that for the next seven some-odd years, clearcutting entire forests is an acceptable way to “cool” the planet.

“Renewable energy and forests are key to Scotland’s contribution to mitigating climate change and FLS is successfully managing both elements,” claims Forestry and Land Scotland about the issue.

What the FLS spokesman who made these statements failed to address is the fact that once the 21 new wind turbines are erected on the clearcut land, there will be no more room to reforest the area – meaning fewer trees on the Scottish landscape.

Back in 2018, some 6,500 acres of woodland were cleared to make way for wind turbines, prompting accusations that the Scottish forestry chief had “desecrated” the land.

What was previously an unspoiled countryside saw total destruction to make way for just seven wind farms, which are highly unreliable, unsightly, noisy and just plain hideous.

Less than half of that land has been replanted or even earmarked for replanting, despite promises from FLS that everything would be made “green” again once the gargantuan metal monstrosities were installed.

“This has been happening in other parts of Europe for some time,” warned Dr. Benny Peiser, head of the Global Warming Policy Foundation think-tank, concerning the spreading virus of so-called “green” energy.

“People in Scotland are not as aware of it because the forestry is not close to population centres,” he added. “Many of these forms of renewable energy have far greater impact on the environment than simply building a power plant.”

“By building wind farms, they are destroying huge areas of forestry for very little effect and are desecrating large parts of beautiful countryside, which can only damage Scotland as a tourism destination.”

Between 2014 and 2016 in Scotland alone, some ten square miles of forests were clearcut for wind farm developments. What was once an unspoiled bastion of beauty and nature is now a rattling metal wasteland that is supposedly “saving the planet.”

“Nothing more than a scheme, exchanging one green (earth) for another green (cash), and that is all it is about,” wrote a commenter at Natural News about the subject.

Reference ~https://energysupply.news/2022-08-15-scotland-cuts-down-14million-trees-wind-farms.html

This 16 km elevated stretch through Pench Tiger Reserve is India’s first and largest road stretch. This road allows unrestricted movement of animals even as commuters, including tourists, drive along the 16-km elevated stretch on the corridor connecting Delhi, Ganeshpur-Mohand in Uttar Pradesh’s Saharanpur district, and Dehradun.

The elevator corridor runs along National Highway 72A for a 28km stretch situated between the Shivalik forest range that is home to several species of wildlife, including elephants. According to officials, the 16 km elevated highway is the country’s first such road passing through forest areas. Notably, the Rajaji Tiger Reserve sits on one side of the forest.

According to a study by Wildlife Institute of India, usage of these underpasses by tigers has increased by 127%.

1.38 billion people are travelling in India on roads by any mean, not just vehicles using fuel (camels, cycles, carts, walking etc). India is a country that needs roads to survive.

Features of the Elevated Stretches

• The stretches are 37-km long and have five underpasses and four minor bridges. It has ensured that the movement of the animals through the forest won’t be disrupted.
• The stretches were built in 2019 and were constructed at a cost of Rs 240 crore. They also have a 750-m long underpass, which is reportedly the world’s longest highway underpass built exclusively for wild animals. As per reports, later, a 1.4-km underpass was being built at a cost of Rs 140 crore in the Madhya Pradesh section of the highway that was set to become the world’s longest such animal-only underpass.
• As per a report by Economic Times, till December 2019, camera traps captured 5,450 images of tigers, leopards, wild dogs, chitals, Indian bison, wild pigs, jungle cats and porcupines, among others, using the underpasses.
• Why was the project delayed? In 2009, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) gave a contract for a four-lane 117-km road between Seoni and Nagpur for Rs 1,170 crore. But the animal activists protested, and the NHAI agreed to embed an additional cost into the contract for underpasses and bridges. To protect the animals, NHAI also agreed to construct guide walls, that have made the light and soundproof. The walls absorb all the sound of the road and also blocks the glaring headlights at night. The effectiveness of the noise barriers is across 300 feet inside the protected area.

Ask Permission:
Before cutting the branch of a tree or removing a flower, tell the spirit of the tree or plant what you are going to do, so that they can withdraw their energy from that place and not feel the cut so strong.

When you go to nature and want to take a stone that was in the river, ask the river keeper if he allows you to take one of his sacred stones.

If you have to climb a mountain or make a pilgrimage through the jungle, ask permission from the spirits and guardians of the place. It is very important that you communicate even if you do not feel, do not listen or do not see. Enter with respect to each place, since Nature listens to you, sees you and feels you.

Every movement you make in the microcosm generates a great impact on the macrocosm.

When you approach an animal, give thanks for the medicine it has for you.

Honour life in its many forms and be aware that each being is fulfilling its purpose, nothing was created to fill spaces, everything and everyone is here remembering our mission, remembering who we are and awakening from the sacred dream to return home.

Getting To The Root; http://www.gettingtotheroot.org/

Artist: Vinod Rams

In her colorful sari and large scarlet bindi, Dr. Vandana Shiva is an arresting presence: She galvanizes crowds, advises government leaders, fields constant calls from the media, then retreats from big-city buzz to work alongside small farmers across the developing world. How did the willful daughter of a Himalayan forest conservator become Monsanto’s worst nightmare? The Seeds of Vandana Shiva tells the remarkable life story of Gandhian eco-activist Dr. Vandana Shiva, how she stood up to the corporate Goliaths of industrial agriculture, rose to prominence in the ecological food movement, and is inspiring an international crusade for change.

“FOOD IS A WEAPON. WHEN YOU CONTROL SEED YOU CONTROL LIFE ON EARTH.”

About Vandana Shiva

Vandana Shiva, a world-renowned environmental thinker, activist, feminist, philosopher of science, writer and science policy advocate, is the founder of Navdanya Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology in India and President of Navdanya International.

Trained as a Physicist at the University of Punjab, she completed her Ph.D. on the ‘Hidden Variables and Non-locality in Quantum Theory’ from the University of Western Ontario, Canada. She later shifted to inter-disciplinary research in science, technology and environmental policy, which she carried out at the Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore, India.

In 1982 she founded the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology (RFSTE), an independent research institute that addresses the most significant problems of ecology of our times, and two years later, Navdanya (‘nine seeds’) the movement in defense of biodiversity and the contributions made to the climate, environment and society by small farmers.

The recipient of many awards, including the Right Livelihood Award, (the ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’) and the Sydney Peace Prize, she has been named among the top five “Most Important People in Asia” by AsiaWeek.

She is a prolific writer and author of numerous books and serves on the board of the International Forum on Globalization, and member of the executive committee of the World Future Council.

The Sheriff of Nottingham has a theory that The Major Oak is a Trysting Tree?

The shape and size of the Major Oak indicates that it has for most of its life stood in a clearing uncrowded by other trees close by. It could have been at a crossroads for local paths. This might have made it a Trusting Tree.

Trysting trees are trees which, because of their individual prominence, appearance, or position, been chosen as meeting places. A ‘tryst’ is a time and a place for a meeting, especially of lovers. The word tryst shares it’s original with the words true and trust.

In a medieval forest like Sherwood (before GPS and sat nav) trysting trees could have acted as essential markers and as perfect locations for secret rendezvous between trusted locals and outlaws.

“A Gest of Robyn Hode” is one of the earliest surviving texts of the Robin Hood tales. The Gest (which meant tale or adventure) is a compilation of various Robin Hood tales, arranged as a sequence of adventures involving the yeoman outlaws Robin Hood and Little John, the poor knight Sir Richard at the Lee, the greedy abbot of St Mary’s Abbey, the villainous Sheriff of Nottingham, and King Edward of England. In it there is a reference to a trstell-tree.

Broke it well,” sayd Robyn,
“Thou gentyll knyght so fre,
And welcome be thou, gentyll knyght,
Under my trystell-tre.

The Major Oak is one of the biggest oak tree in Britain and we won’t discuss how old it might be (something from 800 – 1200 hundred years old ?? Who knows?) The world-famous tree weighs an estimated 23 tonnes, has a girth of 11.14 metres (36 and a half feet) and boasts an impressive canopy that reaches a whopping 28 metres (92ft).

Its height is in the region of (a mere) 52 feet (16m), that means it’s almost twice as broad as it’s tall. The Major Oak is a magnificent tree but she is not tall and is certainly very broad. This shape, where the tree has been able to grow out rather than up could mean that the Major Oak has for most of its life been in a clearing in the forest. Perhaps a cross roads of paths which gave the tree chance to spread out. It’s always stood a little a part?

The Sheriff was the chief agent of the crown in every county for hundreds of years and a vital part of royal government. He was the head of the fiscal, judicial, administrative, and military organisation of the shire and was a direct appointment of the crown.

All the legends of Robin Hood refer to The Sheriff of Nottingham in fact our Sheriff was Sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. Only from 1567 were Sheriffs for Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire appointed separately.

The iconic statue of Robin Hood stands in the former moat of Nottingham Castle. Cast in bronze and weighing half a ton, the figure is 7ft tall, Robin is literally larger than life!

Robin Hood stands outside Nottingham Castle, the point of his arrow aimed at the gatehouse.

References ~ The Sheriff of Nottingham facebook page.

Something happened last week that made me rather sad. The 600-year-old Bretton Oak, near Peterborough, one of the last survivors of Grimeshaw Woods, an ancient forest that once covered much of that part of the world, was felled after final desperate attempts to save it failed.

This ancient tree, which had stood since the reign of Henry VI, was ripped apart by men with hi-vis jackets and chainsaws in a matter of minutes, to the horror of many locals. Its crime? The roots were allegedly causing ‘structural damage’ to nearby housing. Although, as one resident pointed out, that case was debatable.

No matter. Insurance companies were refusing to underwrite the affected properties, and so the man from the council decreed that the oak had to go. Six centuries of history, a living organism that had outlasted kings, queens, plagues, war and famine, felled by petty bureaucracy.

Oh, it’s just an old tree, I hear you say. And yes, it is – or was. But the thing about ancient trees is that they are not just old, knarly bits of wood. They are a living connection to the past. Their bark bears the marks of many generations. Their roots and branches mark the passing of the decades.

They are, in many cases, astonishingly beautiful, living sculptures in our green and pleasant land. And unlike humans, they ask very little from their environment. Indeed, if anything they enrich it: the soil, the air, the countless generations of animals and insects that live among their leaves.

I must confess, I’ve always had a thing about trees, ever since I was a child. My favourite children’s book was Enid Blyton’s The Faraway Tree, about a series of revolving worlds at the top of a magical tree in an enchanted wood. When my father read me The Lord Of The Rings, I fell in love with Treebeard, last of the mighty Ents, described by Gandalf as ‘the oldest living thing that still walks beneath the Sun upon this Middle-earth’.

In middle age, as life has presented its challenges, trees have once again become my escape. When it all gets too much, I get in my car and I go ancient tree-hunting. I seek them out – by rivers, in fields, in churchyards – and I spend time with them.

This may sound batty, and maybe it is, but they bring me great comfort and solace.

They are like old souls, wise and gentle, a reminder that, good or bad, everything passes – and ultimately, nothing really matters, certainly not success or money or whether the barista makes your flat white just so.

Some reside in splendour in National Trust glory, tended to by expert horticulturists, others grow wild in the most unlikely of places – in people’s gardens, by the side of roads, in the corners of fields.

Last week, the Woodland Trust published research indicating that there are between 1.7 and 2.1 million trees of ‘great age’ across Britain, only about 115,000 of which have been recorded.

Like the poor old Bretton Oak, very few have any legal protection, although some – such as the Major Oak in Sherwood Forest (around 1,000 years old) and Big Belly in Savernake Forest (which would have been an acorn around 1066) – are famous enough to be immune from the attentions of town planners.

Everyone loves an oak, of course, but there are many others.

Some, such as birches, are defined as ancient once they get to the age of mere 150. Yews, on the other hand, are practically classified as teenagers until around the age of 800. Some in this country are thought to date back to the Bronze Age. One of my favourites is the Defynnog Yew, which lives in a unprepossessing churchyard in the Brecon Beacons. As wide as it is tall, it is so old the trunk has split, so now it looks like two trees – but it is in fact one.

Climb inside the belly of this gentle giant, as I have done, and you will feel a stillness and a peace like no other. If I could choose anywhere to draw my last breath, it would be in the soft caress of its mossy woodiness. There is a reason so many churches are built where these extraordinary trees grow: there is something deeply spiritual about them.

Why do we protect our ancient buildings and not our trees? Why are we so arrogant as to think bricks and mortar matter more than a creature that was alive when we were still grubbing in the dust?

Our ancient trees are part of our culture and history. We should honour them for the giants they are.

Reference ~ Sarah Vine, 2/7/22 Daily Mail