A hundred-year-old lotus seed wakes up and blooms in the Old Summer Palace. [Image: The Institute of Botany, CAS]

A lotus blossomed on July 7 for the first time in Yuanmingyuan, or the Old Summer Palace, from a seed unearthed in 2017 that had been underground for a hundred years, the Beijing News reported.

In 2017, 11 such seeds were discovered at Jingxiangchi inside the Old Summer Palace during archaeological work. It was the first time that ancient lotus seeds had been found since archaeological excavations were carried out in the Old Summer Palace.

In 2018, the Institute of Botany at the Chinese Academy of Sciences conducted a cultivation experiment on eight of the lotus seeds. Six sprouted, grew leaves, took root and spent the winter in a greenhouse. One flower blossomed on Sunday after it was transplanted at the lotus base in the Old Summer Palace in April. Researchers used a carbon-14 test to determine the age of the ancient lotus seeds.

A staff member from the Old Summer Palace explained why lotus seeds can sprout, take root and grow leaves after a hundred years underground. One is that the seeds were buried in peat soil, where the temperature is low, humidity is low and microorganisms are few, which are not conditions for sprouting. The other is that as the hard shell of a lotus seed is not permeable by water or air, the lotus seeds were hibernating and their metabolism nearly stopped.

Source: Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)