700-year-old Lotus Seeds from Goryeo Dynasty Stored at Arboretum

Flowers of the Ara Red Lotus, whose seeds are believed to have been from the Goryeo Dynasty (918-1392), reaching bloom. (image: National Baekdu-daegan Arboretum)

BONGHWA, Dec. 27 (Korea Bizwire) — A state-run arboretum said Thursday it has been entrusted with storing seeds taken from lotus flowers that bloomed from seeds believed to have been from the Goryeo Dynasty (918-1392).

According to the National Baekdu-daegan Arboretum near Bonghwa, a town in South Korea’s southeast province of North Gyeongsang, the Haman municipality in South Gyeongsang Province asked the arboretum to store the seeds of the lotus, known as the Ara Red Lotus, in its seed vault the previous day.

In 2009, researchers discovered 10 lotus seeds beneath a pond at the ruins of Seongsan Fortress in Haman, a historic site from the Korean ancient city-state kingdom of Ara Gaya.

The Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources used the radiocarbon dating method to determine that the recovered seeds are between 650 to 760 years old. Out of the 10, three managed to germinate and bloom into flowers, which the Haman municipality later called the Ara Red Lotus in reference to Ara Gaya that existed from 42 B.C. to A.D. 559.

The Seed Vault at the arboretum, which was established on a site of 27,600 square meters as the largest one of its kind in Asia, is a seed storage facility set up inside a underground tunnel that can store up to more than 2 million seed samples free of charge.

(Yonhap)