Armed with shovels, gloves and headlights, the team followed their map to the excavation site. The atmosphere was ‘very painful’, said dr. Weber said. Dr. Telewski is digging a neat, square hole.
But as they carved deeper and wider, there were no bottles to be found. “The birds started chirping,” said Dr. Weber said, and the sun threatens to blow their cloak. “Morale was low.”
Toe dr. Beal buried the seed bottles for the first time, he planned to have one dug up every five years and that the experiment would take a century. But over time, the drivers extended the team between excavations to ten years, then 20. Two were slightly delayed: 1919s were moved to the spring of 1920 – which dr. Telewski suspects it may be related to the 1918 flu; and 2020s have been moved to this year due to Covid-19-related campus closures.
To prevent the wire from being lost during these decades, a kind of ministry of seed keepers has developed in the state of Michigan. Each generation of botanists passed on the torch to younger colleagues.
Dr. Telewski – a professor of plant biology at the university and the seventh person to control the experiment – dug up his first seed bottle in 2000 with his predecessor, Jan Zeevaart, who died in 2009. his own mortality, he gave a copy of the card to David Lowry, an associate professor of plant biology, who expressed interest in joining.
Just a few months later, dr. Telewski had a stroke. While he has since recovered, ‘it just showed me how delicate it is to give these things away while keeping it a secret’, said dr. Lowry said. Shortly afterwards, dr. Telewski dr. Weber, who is an assistant professor at the university, and dr. Brudvig invited to get involved too.
Over the years, purely practical decisions by dr. Beal develops a patina of mysticism. Dr. Beal dug up each new bottle under the guise of darkness not to be dramatic, but simply to protect the other bottled seeds from sunlight, which would cause them to germinate ahead of their time, dr. (The team uses green light bulbs in their headlights for the same reason.)