Life: Plants

In the struggle for survival plants are perhaps even more inventive than animals devising solutions to the challenges of life. Unlike all other living creatures, plants require light to thrive – due to photosynthesis. While the rainforest would seem the most prosperous place for plants to live, they need to grow from the shades of the forest floor toward the light beyond the canopy. And if you cannot grow, you must climb, using adhesive pads or sharp claws or swirling coils. While bamboo can grow some 90 feet in just as many days, bristlecone pines grow over centuries at altitudes of several thousand feet – some being as old as five thousand years, the oldest living things on earth. To feed, the sundew uses sticky droplets on its tentacles to ensnare mosquitoes emerging from boggy waters, while the venus flytrap locks insects within their clambshell leaves. In the Antarctic cold of Tasmania’s Cradle Mountain, the richea produces nectar in the sun’s warmth to lure birds into pollinating the flowers. Even cleverer is the sandhill milkweed in the spring meadows of Florida, which defends itself from the onslaught of monarch caterpillars by spilling latex drops from its veins; yet once they pupate into butterflies, they, too, cannot resist the flowers’ nectar. But the most manipulative of plants enslave their pollinators, like the heliconia in Dominica, which forces the purple-throated Carib hummingbird, with its long curved beak to return time and again, by carefully rationing the amount of nectar.

They say the apple never falls far from the tree, but plants have contrived ingenious strategies for dispersing their seeds – so as to avoid competing with their offspring for space (think of helicopter seeds). The brunsvigia is carried along by the wind, stem and all, cartwheeling across the South African desert and casting about seeds. In Borneo, the alsomitra produces a ball-sized pod with seeds that glide hundreds of feet through the air on wafer-thin wings. The saguro cactus can survive the extreme conditions of Arizona’s Sorona desert by flowering in the cool of the night to attract bats, while its sweet fruits attract doves, tortoise and ants that will disperse its seeds miles away. On Socotra Island in the Arabian Sea, dragon blood trees survive with their bizarre shape (a thick trunk with branches that wave out in an upside down parasol) as their leaves catch drops of the occasional morning mist; while the desert rose has a hardy bulbous trunk that stores water. Mangroves can even stand the saltwater tides because their warty pores filter most of the salt and breathe in air when they are exposed. And grasses have created such a bond with one particular animal, that human civilization would have been impossible without wheat and rice. The entire episode is a feast of variegated hues, sunflowers, foxgloves, bromeliads and orchids. To capture the life of plants, the program uses extraordinary time-lapse photography, sometimes inventing new techniques in the process. And as a bonus, the backdrop features stunning footage of starry desert nights and aurora borealis. Truly, this is a must watch!