Dozens of bottles of centuries-old, impeccably preserved cherries and berries from the cellar of George Washington's Mount Vernon estate in northern Virginia have been discovered during an archaeological dig.
MOUNT VERNON, Va. — George Washington never did cut down the cherry tree, despite the famous story to the contrary, but he did pack away quite a few bottles of the fruit at his Mount Vernon home.
“Finding what is essentially fresh fruit, 250 years later, is pretty spectacular,” Boroughs said in an interview. “All the stars sort of have to align in the right manner for that to happen.” “It's kind of a longshot,” said Benjamin Gutierrez, a USDA plant geneticist, of the chances of using a cherry pit to grow a tree. Seeds preserve best when they are dry, and most of the samples found at Mount Vernon were waterlogged. A couple of pits tested initially were not viable as seeds.
“The enslaved folks who were taking care of the trees, picking the fruit, working in the kitchen, those would have been the folks that probably would have overseen and done this process,” Boroughs said. “It’s a highly skilled process. Otherwise they just wouldn’t have survived this way.” “In this case, because of these needed structural repairs to the mansion, the ground was going to be disturbed. So we looked there first,” he continued. “We didn’t expect to find all this.”
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No lie: Perfectly preserved centuries-old cherries unearthed at George Washington's Mount VernonDozens of bottles of centuries-old, impeccably preserved cherries and berries from the cellar of George Washington's Mount Vernon estate in northern Virginia have been discovered during an archaeological dig
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No lie: Perfectly preserved centuries-old cherries unearthed at George Washington's Mount VernonDozens of bottles of centuries-old, impeccably preserved cherries and berries from the cellar of George Washington's Mount Vernon estate in northern Virginia have been discovered during an archaeological dig.
Read more »
No lie: Perfectly preserved centuries-old cherries unearthed at George Washington's Mount VernonDozens of bottles of centuries-old, impeccably preserved cherries and berries from the cellar of George Washington's Mount Vernon estate in northern Virginia have been discovered during an archaeological dig.
Read more »