Unfortunately, Silphium will likely never be resurrected. Even the Romans did not manage to grow it. Wiki:
Another theory is that when Roman provincial governors took over power from Greek colonists, they over-farmed silphium and rendered the soil unable to yield the type that was said to be of such medicinal value. Theophrastus wrote in Enquiry into Plants that the type of Ferula specifically referred to as "silphium" was odd in that it could not be cultivated.[16] He reports inconsistencies in the information he received about this, however.[17] This could suggest the plant is similarly sensitive to soil chemistry as huckleberries which, when grown from seed, are devoid of fruit.[2]
Similar to the soil theory, another theory holds that the plant was a hybrid, which often results in very desired traits in the first generation, but second-generation can yield very unpredictable outcomes. This could have resulted in plants without fruits, when planted from seeds, instead of asexually reproducing through their roots.[2]
PS: The poster (not me) seemed to have expected this. Throway...
but, resurrecting plants that are extinct is still very exciting.
I guess that's useful for people who aren't able to access the article itself in the standard ways, being that it doesn't seem to be paywalled at all.
But in all seriousness, that's pretty amazing. But what's the medicinal properties? It's not mentioned nearly at all in the article.
As all the strands of DNA in the cells of the seed degrade in different ways, the cells can still patch up the damaged DNA.
This neat trick works like the sacrificial metal on the hulk of ships. (Loose analogy)
Also plants often have many duplicate copies of their genome per cell.
> Based on all these things, it’s not the Judean balsam