Nearly half the Verbascum seeds from 2000’s bottle bloomed, even though they’d been in stasis underground for over a century. Only one reliable sprouter is left: Verbascum blattaria, a splay-leaved, yellow-flowered herb. As the decades passed, most dropped off one by one. Telewski said.įor the first few rounds of the experiment, a number of species flourished, with seeds growing readily after 10, 15 or 20 years. He was likely trying to help local farmers - frustrated by endless weeding, and wondering how long it would take “before they might have some hope of seeing a decline in the seed bank, and their workload going down,” Dr. Beal hoped to better understand how long plants could last in the soil, and what triggers them to grow. This plant reserve is known as the seed bank. And the botanists in East Lansing hope that it will last for at least another 80. It’s one of the world’s longest-running experiments, having already gone on for 142 years. Every 20 years, the experiment’s caretakers creep out to a secret location under cover of night, dig up a bottle, scatter its seeds over a tray of sterile soil and see which ones grow. Weber and her colleagues are the latest custodians of the Beal seed viability experiment: a multicentury attempt to figure out how long seeds can lie dormant in the soil without losing their ability to germinate. It would guide them to a botanist’s version of buried treasure: a bottle filled with sand and a bunch of really old seeds.ĭr. Telewski, the group’s leader, pulled out a copy of a map, drawn like an architectural blueprint. As they stood around blowing on their hands, the fifth member of their crew, Frank Telewski, “emerged from the darkness with a shovel slung over his shoulder,” Dr. Three of the school’s other plant scientists were already there, waiting in dribbling snow. That would be the Nagbomb.On Thursday morning, several hours before sunrise, Marjorie Weber arrived at a rendezvous spot on the campus of Michigan State University. His favorite? 'A woman who bombed her fridge to remind her not to break her diet,' Beck says. He's received 2,500 proposals, some as esoteric as the aerosol art that inspired his project – including designs for a sound-based scavenger hunt and a possum deterrent to protect rosebushes. Soundbombs can be purchased through Beck's Web site ( but he won't sell to just anyone: Wannabe audio anarchists submit applications describing what the device will be used for and how much they're willing to pay. 'Sound jars people into an awareness of their surroundings.'

'I wanted to draw attention to street art by emphasizing it acoustically,' Beck says. The innards are pure RadioShack – a circuit board, 6-volt power cells, and a motion sensor that triggers the audio. Beck's Soundbombs are innocuous-looking 6-inch plastic shells that broadcast short clips (lines from Shakespeare, flatulence, or anything else you record) to unwitting passersby. Now Felix Beck, a designer in Berlin, is graffitiing cities with noise. The original urban art transformed concrete into canvas using a few cans of Krylon.

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