科學家們從2000年前的種子中復活了古樹

科學家們從2000年前的種子中復活了古樹

The world's most remarkable date palm trees might not exist if Sarah Sallon hadn't gotten sick while working as a doctor in India in 1986.

如果薩拉·薩倫1986年在印度當醫(yī)生時沒有生病，世界上最引人注目的棗棕櫚樹可能就不會存在。

Antibiotics didn't help. What cured here, she thinks, were some traditional herbal remedies.

抗生素也沒什么用。她認為，在這里治愈的是一些傳統(tǒng)的草藥療法。

"It was just amazing. It was so incredible," she says. "And then I got very interested. There's nothing like a doctor cured of their problem to get them interested in something."

“太神奇了。太不可思議了，”她說。然后我變得非常感興趣。沒有什么比醫(yī)生治好他們的病更能讓他們對某件事感興趣了。”

When she moved back home to Israel, to her job at the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem, she went looking for medicinal plants there. And she found lots of them. But she also heard about ancient medicinal plants that had disappeared.

當她回到以色列的家，在耶路撒冷的哈達薩醫(yī)療中心工作時，她去那里尋找藥用植物。她發(fā)現(xiàn)了很多。但她也聽說了一些已經(jīng)消失的古代藥用植物。

"They're just historical ghosts," she says. "Like the famous date plantations along the Dead Sea, 2.000 years ago — described by Pliny. They're not there anymore. They just vanished!"

“他們只是歷史上的幽靈，”她說。“就像2000年前死海沿岸著名的棗棕櫚樹種植園--由普林尼描述。它們已經(jīng)不在那里了。它們就這么消失了!”

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."

然而，薩倫意識到，那些樹上的種子仍然存在。它們是從考古遺址找到的。所以她去找考古學家，提議種植一些這些種子，看看它們是否會再次生長。一開始并不順利。“他們認為我瘋了!”她說。“他們甚至認為這是不可想象的。”

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.

但她一直在努力，最終說服了其中的幾個人提供一些種子來試驗這一點。十多年前，她和阿拉瓦環(huán)境研究所的研究員伊萊恩·索洛維種植了一些這種古老的棕櫚籽。“六個星期后，小萌芽出現(xiàn)了!”她說。

One tree grew. They named it Methuselah. But Methuselah had a problem. Date trees are a little unusual. They're either male or female; each tree makes either pollen or fertile flowers. But it takes both to produce fruit.

一棵樹長出來了。他們給它起名叫瑪土撒拉。但是瑪土撒拉有個問題。棗棕櫚樹有點不尋常。它們要么是雄的，要么是雌的;每棵樹要么開花粉，要么開可育的花。但兩者都需要才能結出果實。

This week, in the journal Science Advances, Sallon and her colleagues announced that they'd grown another six trees from some of these ancient seeds. Two of them are female. "You could say that we found Methuselah a wife," she says, laughing.

本周，在《科學進展》雜志上，薩倫和她的同事宣布他們已經(jīng)用這些古老的種子種出了另外六棵樹。其中兩名是雌性。“你可以說我們找到了瑪士撒拉(樹的名字)的妻子，”她笑著說。

The female trees haven't flowered yet, but Sallon is hoping that it might happen this year. If one of them does, researchers will take pollen from Methuselah, fertilize those flowers, and wait for fruit to form.

雌樹還沒有開花，但薩倫希望今年能開花。如果其中一種方法有效，研究人員將從瑪士撒拉獲取花粉，使這些花受精，然后等待果實的形成。

When Sallon talks about this possibility, 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."

當薩倫談到這種可能性時，她的聲音充滿了驚訝和期待。她說，根據(jù)古代作家的說法，這些棗“以其美妙的甜度、巨大的體積和可長期儲存的能力而聞名，所以它們實際上出口到了羅馬帝國各地。”