# 3000 Year-Old Lotus Seeds Still Viable? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 25, 2004, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/3000-year-old-lotus-seeds-still-viable/231170 "2004-02-25T20:52:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2004, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/3000-year-old-lotus-seeds-still-viable/231170/1 "2004-02-25T20:52:13Z")
A few years ago I heard about a University of California botanist who recovered some 300 year old lotus seeds, from the bottom of a lake in China. When planted, the seeds produced plants! Are these the oldest seeds that have been viable? Can these seeds be obtained anywhere? I’d love to grow an old lotus flower. Anyway, have any of the seeds found in Egyptian tombs ever been found to sprout? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2004, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/3000-year-old-lotus-seeds-still-viable/231170/2 "2004-02-25T21:23:47Z")
From David Attenborough’s _The Private Life Of Plants_ (ISBN 0563 37023 8): > [@](#): > > Desert seeds can remain in the sand for decades, awaiting a shower of rain. One of the longest recorded waits of all is that if a lupin in the Arctic tundra. It’s seeds, if they do not get the tiny warming they need in any particular year, may be blown away and swept into crevices in the frozen soil. Decay at these low temeperatures proceeds so slowly that dead vegetation accumulates layer upon layer, as peat. If the seeds get buried more deeply that a few inches, they become part of the permafrost, nature’s deep-freeze, where nothing melts. Seeds excavated from such layers that are ten thousand years old have been taken to a laboratory and there warmed and watered. A high percentage of them proved to be dead, but a few, miraculously, have come to life. > The Arctic lupin may hold the record for longevity, but there is another example of a return to life which is, perhaps, even more romantic. In 1982, an ancient settlement was being excavated in Japan. It belonged to the Yayoi Period and was estimated to be about two thousand years old. The people who lived there were farmers and stored their harvest in small pits. One was excavated which still contained some grains of rice. they were all blackened and dead. But among them lay one seed that was different from all the others. It was taken, planted and watered and it sprang to life. it was a Magnolia. He goes on to explain that it appears to be Magnolia Kobus, but has more petals than the modern species; at the time of writing, it had not yet been ascertained whether this was a temporary aberration or a genuine genetic difference.