More than 30 thousand years ago a squirrel stashed her winter nuts in a burrow. For some reason the cache of more than 600 thousand fruits and seeds became inaccessible – buried perhaps, or flooded. The whole burrow, at the tundra’s edge, froze immediately and remained in the permafrost for millennia. This ancient larder was uncovered by scientists in 2007. They tried to grow plants from seeds and eventually managed to produce growth using placental material. A flower has grown from one of those seeds into the most ancient plant in the world.
