Science: Long-Lived Lotus

Long-Lived LotusWhen two of his lotus seeds sprouted and began pushing out leaves last spring, no one was more surprised than Dr. George W. Harding of the National Capital Parks in Washington. The young plants looked perfectly normal. But the seeds, collected by a Japanese scientist named Ichiro Ohga, had been picked out of a Manchurian peat deposit and were claimed to be 50,000 years old. Most botanists were skeptical. The lotus seeds keep their vitality for a long time, they said, but 150 or 200 years is about the limit.

While the infant lotuses flourished in their Washington greenhouse, another batch of the seeds was sent to Dr. Willard F. Libby of the University of Chicago. Libby decided to check their age by measuring their content of radioactive carbon 14.-In the current issue of Science Dr. Libby reported his findings: his tests on 19 of the lotus seeds had proved that they are 1,000 years old, give or take a couple of centuries. This is nothing like 50,000 years, but it makes the seeds the oldest of any species that have yet been known to sprout after such a long sleep.

In the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens in Anacostia Park, the two young-old lotus plants are still thriving. But until they are due to bloom, in about five years, Dr. Harding will not know just what sort of lotus grew in the Manchurian peat bog 1,000 years ago.

-All living organisms get a small amount of carbon 14 from the atmosphere, where it is formed by cosmic rays. When the organism dies or is buried, the carbon 14 slowly disappears. The amount that has disappeared is a fair measure of the time that has passed since the organism died or stopped growing.