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What strange and monstrous things lurk in that jar?

Take a closer look...

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What you see in these pictures is the birth of a Sacred Lotus. Let me tell you a bed-time story about this awesome plant.

Once upon a time, before the people we think of as "ethnic Japanese" inhabited the island of Japan, there was a civilization of people called the "Jomon."

At that time, the actual island of Japan was much different. When you look at Japan today you are essentially looking at an island that has been terraformed to suite the needs of the present inhabitants. When the Jomon lived there, everything that wasn't mountain was mostly shallow swamp.

In those shallow swamps grew the Sacred Lotus, and, based on artifacts, the Jomon life revolved around the lotus - the food source (seeds, leaves, roots of the lotus) was that important. The end of the Jomon culture is generally dated at around 300 BCE.

This date is particularly interesting because, in about 1920, a Japanese botanist named Ichiro Ohga found lotus seeds on a construction site near the remains of a Jomon dugout canoe. Several of the seeds were sacrificed for carbon dating, and an attempt to germinate the seeds was made on the others.

The seeds germinated and grew into healthy adult plants, and the carbon dating put the age of the seeds at around 1,300 years old. Lotus seeds stay viable for a very, very long time.

Below is a picture of lotus seeds, with a peanut in there for size comparison:

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One of the things that gives the lotus seed it's amazing longevity is that it has a very, very hard seed coat. In order to get the seed to germinate, you have to cut through the seed coat to allow water to enter. Once this happens, provided the seed is fertile, germination takes off within a couple of days. In this picture you can see the whitish spot on the germinated seed that I made to breach the seed coat:

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And here are three seeds growing in water. They first send out two leaves, and when these reach the water surface then more are sent out, and roots begin to develop.

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Here's one of the seeds out of water:

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At this point, I put the seeds into a pot with mud on the bottom. A lotus begins with floating leaves, like a water lily, but then it develops leaves that rise up above the water. Here's what my lotus babies look like right now:

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Eventually, they will look like this:

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My babies won't flower for at least a year, but, ultimately, this is what I should end up with:

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