Scientists grow ‘lost tree’ mentioned in Bible using mysterious 1,000-year-old seed

It's something from the pages of the Bible and scientists think it has been gone for a very long time.

Botanists have managed to grow a long-lost tree species from an ancient, 1,000-year-old seed discovered in a cave in the Judean Desert.

The researchers involved in the project strongly believe the tree species, which is thought to be extinct today, could've been the source of a healing balm that's been mentioned in the Bible and other ancient texts.

The ancient seed, which is about 2cm long, was unearthed during an archaeological dig in the lower Wadi el-Makkuk region north of Jerusalem in the late 1980s and was determined to be in pristine condition.

Scientists conducting the new research weren't able to identify the type of tree from just the seed, so the team – led by Dr. Sarah Sallon, a physician who founded the Louis L. Borick Natural Medicine Research Center at Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem – planted the seed to further investigate.

According to Sallon, there was a possibility that the tree was the source of the biblical "tsori," a medical plant extract associated with the historical region of Gilead north of the Dead Sea in the Jordan Rift Valley, a mountainous and forested area that was incredibly cultivated and is now part of Jordan.

The teams' findings regarding the origins of the mysterious specimen were detailed in a study published Sept. 10 in the journal Communications Biology , where the seed was nicknamed "Sheba."

Before planting the seed, it had to be germinated first. This involved soaking the Judean Desert seed in water mixed with hormones and fertilizer before planting it in a pot of sterile soil.

The process was done by study coauthor Dr. Elaine Solowey, a researcher emerita at the Center for Sustainable Agriculture at The Arava Institute for Environmental Studies in Israel.

"About five and a half weeks later, up jumps this nice little shoot," Sallon said. Protecting the shoot tip was a caplike feature called an operculum. Once it had shed, the team used radiocarbon dating on the organic matter to estimate the plant's age and found the specimen dated to between 993 AD and 1202 AD.

After the tree began to sprout leaves, DNA analysis from the leaf – performed by study coauthor Dr. Andrea Weeks, an associate professor in the department of biology at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia – later revealed that the tree belongs to a unique species of the Commiphora family, which is distributed across Africa, Madagascar and the Arabian Peninsula and is known for its aromatic gum resins.

But the sample didn't match any of the known Commiphora species in Weeks' database.

Due to its unique genetic fingerprint, researchers suspected the unknown species originated from an extinct taxon once native to the region surrounding the Judean Desert, according to the study.

Oddly enough, the tree, which is now more than 14 years old and almost 10 feet tall, hasn't flowered nor produced fruit. So, without these more easily identifiable features, the species of the tree went unidentifiable with certainty.

With historical research done, Sallon suspected that the tree might have Biblical origins. Ancient texts from the region, including the Bible, described the tree as "Judean Balsam" or "Balm of Gilead" — a fragrant resin harvested to make a coveted perfume that was exported around the world at the time.

"We planted it in 2010 (and) it's now 2024. Why did we wait so long (to publish the research)? Because I wanted to make sure that it wasn't the Judean Balsam. And how would I definitively know that? By smelling it," Sallon said.

But the tree, related to the myrrh tree known for its resin, never produced any scent. When the plant was 3 years old, a phytochemical analysis was conducted on its resin, leaves and branches to test for aromatic compounds, much like those found in myrrh. But there were none.

Instead, compounds known for medicinal use were detected, including "guggulterols," which have been identified from the resin of the related tree species Commiphora wightii as having potential cancer-fighting properties.

"Based on all these things, it's not the Judean balsam, it's a close cousin of it, and one of the non-aromatic Commiphora that is a treasure chest of medicinal compounds," she said.

Since the tree has healing compounds, Sallon and her colleagues concluded that the tree might have instead been the source of a medicinal balm known as tsori that's also mentioned in historical texts.

According to Dr. Louise Colville, senior research leader in seed and stress biology at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in London, who wasn't involved in the research, seeds with such an incredible lifespan are rare.

"What's surprising in this story is it was just a single seed and to be able to have one chance for that to germinate is extremely lucky," she said.

"Working in a seed bank, seeing the potential for that extreme longevity gives us hope that banking and storing seeds that some at least will survive for very long periods of time."

As a result, researchers said the latest research also sheds light on the importance of resurrecting species of likely significance to ancient cultures.