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Plants evolved seeds to hack time. Thanks to seeds they can cast their genes forward into the future, enabling species to endure across seasons, years, and occasionally millennia.
When a 2000-year-old extinct date palm seed was discovered, no one expected it to still be alive. But it sprouted a healthy young date palm. That seeds produced millennia ago could still be viable today suggests seeds are capable of extreme lifespans.
Yet many seeds, including those crucial to our everyday lives, don't live very long at all. In The Age of Seeds Fiona McMillan-Webster tells the astonishing story of seed longevity, the crucial role they play in our everyday lives, and what that might mean for our future.
Fiona McMillan-Webster is a Brisbane-based science writer with a Bachelor of Science in physics and a PhD in biophysics. She has written science stories for National Geographic, Forbes, COSMOS magazine, Australian Geographic, and other publications. Her writing has also appeared in the Best Australian Science Writing anthologies for 2015, 2016, 2018 and 2021. She was runner-up for the UNSW Bragg Press Prize for Science Writing 2016.
In addition, Fiona has worked behind the scenes to help produce scientific content across a variety of other media. This has included the development of panel discussions for the World Science Festival Brisbane, as well as research for factual TV series such as the ABC's Ask the Doctor.
"The expansive story of one of nature's great miracles – exploring not just the future of a plant, a species or an ecosystem but of our own ongoing survival."
– Danielle Clode
"Exciting, fast-paced and beautifully told. The sleeping seed has found a powerful voice in this book, transcending history and geography, in a rip-roaring tale of human endeavour to feed, clothe and cure a human population of nearly 8 billion people."
– Paul Smith
