Silene stenophylla

Recently, a 32000 years old Ice Age flower blossomed again. Silene stenophylla is a species of flowering plant that grows in the Arctic tundra of far eastern Siberia and the mountains of Northern Japan. Frozen samples, estimated via radiocarbon dating to be around 32,000 years old, were discovered in the same area as current living specimens; and in February 2012, a team claimed to have successfully regenerated a plant from the samples, thus making it the oldest regenerated plan ever. A team of scientists from the Institute of Cell Biophysics of the Russian Academy of Sciences announced they had successfully regenerated specimens from fruit that had been frozen for 31,800 (±300) years according to radiocarbon dating.

The plant was regenerated from the fruit tissues obtained from an Ice Age squirrel’s treasure chamber, a burrow containing fruit and seeds that had been stuck in the Siberian permafrost . Scientists say that the regenerated plant is fertile, producing white flowers and viable seeds