David Attenborough's Miracle Plant Took 200 Years To Grow | Nature Bites

this plant is called the pin cushion and grows in south africa and this individual specimen is something of a miracle in 1803 a british man of war captured a dutch merchantman coming back from the cape of good hope and on board in the cargo they found a packet of seeds when they got back to britain the seeds went to the tower of london for quite a long time but eventually they found their way here to queue and one of them germinated and produced this plant after 200 years judge shows how long seeds can survive even without help [Music] this ability to endure has inspired q's latest groundbreaking project [Music] its ultimate goal is to ensure the survival of every remaining species of plant on earth the work takes place deep underground in a labyrinth of sealed vaults that are encased in steel and concrete [Music] it's called the q millennium seed bank its contents are so valuable that it was specifically designed to withstand the impact of a bomb or an air crash inside these vaults there are seeds gathered from plants all over the world in fact as much as 10 percent of the world's known species are represented in there [Music] the heart of the seed band project is this gigantic freezer full of seeds in sealed jars [Music] the conditions inside are perfect for long-term storage the job is aided by the very nature of seeds the seed is the stage in which a plant can remain dormant waiting until conditions for germination are right inside each seed there's a store of food outside there's a tuck protective shell to guard against predation or damage in fact a seed is a kind of time capsule that can live for sometimes a decade sometimes even centuries the aim of the seed bank is to prolong that period as long as possible to do that they clean the seeds dry them put them in jars like this and then keep them here at minus 20 degrees centigrade how long they will survive under these conditions nobody knows but it's certainly going to be for a very long time new samples arrived at the seed bank every day [Music] they are first identified and studied in microscopic detail by chief morphologist dr wolfgang's stubby [Music] the latest report from israel claimed that date palm seeds have been found in king herod's the great palace in masada and they germinated after 2000 years so that is possible and this is the principle the millennium seed bank is built upon that seats can survive for millennia if necessary the longevity of most kinds of seeds is unknown so they must be regularly checked samples of seeds are periodically removed from the vaults and germinated [Music] if most grow the whole batch can be left in the vault for another decade but sometimes a sample fails like these anemone seeds which although germinating in sterilized conditions become choked with fungus [Music] when this happens the scientists must find out why and how to prevent it happening again the seed bank project is still in its infancy but the evidence is that there's no time to lose there are already seeds stored here from plants that are now extinct in the wild [Music] the problem is what many people don't understand is that if a species goes extinct it means it is gone for us forever there was five mass extinctions in the earth's history after every mars extinction it took between 4 and 20 million years for biodiversity to bounce back to pre-extinction levels now clearly we cannot wait 4 million years for life to bounce back so if we don't keep seeds here and this plant species goes extinct it will be lost to mankind forever thankfully there's a great momentum behind the seed bank project over the next few decades these shelves will be filled to capacity [Music] there's enough space here to hold seed from every single species of plants on this planet but this place is not just an insurance policy against the ultimate apocalypse this is of huge value right now for wherever we discover that a plant is teetering on the brink of extinction we can now bolster its numbers with seeds from here and so ensure that no plant species on earth you

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Id: i6-OZ5oHYT0

Length: 7min 44sec (464 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 12 2021