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David Lowry @davidlowry.bsky.social · 26/10/2023

Really excited that we have now published the latest results of the Beal seed experiment. The experiment was started 144 years ago, when Dr. William Beal put seeds inside bottles and buried them at secret location on the MSU campus. bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

The 141‐year period for Dr. Beal's seed viability experiment: A hybrid surprise

PremiseIn 1879, Dr. William Beal buried 20 glass bottles filled with seeds and sand at a single site at Michigan State University. The goal of the experiment was to understand seed longevity in the s....

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Tom Kimmerer, PhD @tomkimmerer.bsky.social · 26/10/2023

This is such a wonderful experiment of a kind that scarcely exists in our fast research fields. I’m so pleased that Frank Telewski is still part of this work.

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Tim Triche, Jr.🔰 @timtriche.bsky.social · 26/10/2023

1) very cool! 2) which field? I always forget just how agricultural MSU is until I drive by the sheep and the Poultry Teaching Facility en route to ISC. Yesterday reminded me 🐏

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David Lowry @davidlowry.bsky.social · 26/10/2023

Every 20 years, a group of us sneaks out in the middle of the night and digs up one bottle to figure out how many seeds are still viable. We did this in the spring of 2021, as snowflakes were falling from the sky. Out of the 1000 seeds originally in the bottle, 20 of the genus Verbascum germinated.

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