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Midwinter, and the countryside is so still,
it seems almost lifeless.

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But these trees and bushes
and grasses around me

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are living organisms just like animals.

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And they have to face very much
the same sort of problems

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as animals face throughout their lives
if they're to survive.

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They have to fight one another,
they have to compete for mates.

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They have to invade new territories.

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But the reason we're seldom aware
of these dramas

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is that plants, of course,
live on a different time-scale.

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But these days we have ways
of speeding things up visually,

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and then you can see
just how dramatic the lives of plants can be.

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Condense three months into twenty seconds

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and the desolation of winter
quickly warms into the riot of spring.

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Speed a week into a minute,

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and you can sense the urgency with which the
ground-living plants race to unfurl their flowers.

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Wood anemones nod attentively at the sun
as it rises and sets each day.

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Above, hazel leaves, moving to the same rhythm,
pulse as they expand to their full size.

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Beneath them, the broad leaves of docks
are rising from the ground.

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Foxgloves gape almost alarmingly as they invite
insects to come and collect their pollen.

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Strange though it may seem, some plants
can move not just their flowers and leaves,

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but they can travel from place to place.

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Take, for example, this bramble.

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Of all the woodland plants,
this is one of the most aggressive.

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It waves its shoots agitatedly from side to side,
as if feeling for the best way forward.

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And when a shoot settles on its course,
it thrusts ahead relentlessly.

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The invading stem's backward-pointing spines

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give it the grip it needs to climb over
almost anything that stands in its way.

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It can advance as much as three inches in a day.

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Before long, the shoot will put down rootlets,

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and then new territory will have been annexed
for the bramble's empire.

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Other adult plants travel even faster.

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The bird-cage plant lives in California,

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but the desert dunes are always moving

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and a sheltered site
can suddenly become intolerably exposed.

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So the plant must find a new place.

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This plant is now dead,
but within it there is still life.

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These tiny particles are the next generation.

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Each is a miracle of packaging.

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Each, after all,
contains complete genetic instructions

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for rebuilding an adult plant like this.

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And it's precisely because
these grains are so small

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that it is in this form
that most plants do most of their travelling.

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Some of these genetic particles,
in fact, are microscopic.

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The smallest of all belong to fungi.

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Fungi are not, to be accurate, plants at all.
They belong to a kingdom all their own.

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But the particles they produce, called spores,
are in many ways similar to seeds.

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A single puffball produces so many

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that if, for two generations,
every spore grew into an adult,

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the resultant mass of puffballs
would be 800 times the volume of the earth.

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Like the bird-cage plant,
it can be carried along by the wind.

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But the real long-distance travellers
are the spores

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that are knocked from it in clouds, like smoke.

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In autumn, other, smaller fungi
appear on the woodland floor.

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Earth-stars.

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Their appearance just after
they emerge above ground

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gives little hint of how complex they will become.

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As damp autumn airs
blow through the leafless woods...

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..the earth-stars begin to transform themselves.

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(THUNDER)

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They open at this time of year
to take advantage of the falling rain.

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A drip gives them all the energy they need
to propel their spores into the air.

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Flowers also use the wind
to transport their seeds,

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and few do it more successfully than dandelions.

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As their petals fall, their flower-heads,
over a period of one or two weeks,

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are transformed into wonderfully intricate globes,

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each a precise array of a hundred or so seeds,
all awaiting the wind.

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Their seeds are much heftier
than the spores of fungi.

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For them to fly, special apparatus is needed.

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Each is fitted with its own individual parachute.

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The device is so efficient that a breeze
will carry the seeds high into the sky.

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In such a dense crowd of adult plants as this,

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there's no room for the next generation,
the seeds must get away.

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And the wind will take them for miles.

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Trees have a particular advantage when
dispatching their seeds by air - their height.

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The farther a seed has to fall, the longer it takes
to reach the ground and the further it can travel.

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And these cottonwood trees need do no more

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than provide their seeds
with straightforward fluff.

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But this, because of their height,
is enough to carry them for miles.

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Every summer, the waters of the Great Lakes
of North America

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become thickly flecked with seeds from
the cottonwoods growing around their margins.

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A few will reach a distant shore
and germinate.

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Most will be lost.

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But the cottonwoods produce seeds in such
numbers that the loss is of no consequence.

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There is much less wind
in the tropical rainforest.

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Even above the canopy,
the humid air hangs as a mist.

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Below, there is seldom even a breath of air.

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If a plant is to exploit its height here, it has to
give its seeds very good flying equipment indeed.

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And none does that better
than this liana in Borneo.

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Aircraft designers have tried to build a wing
as efficient as this one but failed.

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Even the faintest updraught
produced by the slightest thermal

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is enough to lift this little glider with its
seed passenger and so extend its flight.

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Plants preceded humanity
in building fixed-wing gliders.

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And not only gliders -
they created helicopters, too.

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Sycamore seeds.

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The balance between the weight of the seed
and the length and width of the wing

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is exact and perfect.

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A slightly heavier seed
or a shorter and narrower wing

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and the whole thing would fall like a stone.

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The tri-star plant
produces a revolving seed with six blades,

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and aircraft designers have yet to copy that...

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..or this.

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Plants also use explosives...

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..jet propulsion.

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This is a squirting cucumber.

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And this, Himalayan balsam.

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Its seed capsules are full of liquid
at such a pressure,

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the slightest touch makes them explode.

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(FIREWORK NOISES)

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The force is so great that seeds can be
shot away for as much as fifteen feet.

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Mesembryanthemum seed-heads
are opened by rain.

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It's the sudden absorption of water
by their dry tissues that powers their opening.

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Once open, they expose a screen
as taut as a trampoline.

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Raindrops bounce off it,
taking the seeds with them.

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Water provides many plants
with the power they need for travelling.

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Provided the seeds are given the right equipment,
it can shift really heavy, bulky ones.

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Beside many a tropical river there hangs
the biggest of all seed pods, the sea-bean.

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These huge containers house one of the most
successful of all vegetable travellers.

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There's a groove across the pod
between each seed,

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so that each can fall away independently
in its own separate packaging.

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One by one,
the sea-beans start on their voyages.

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This one is setting off
down a small river in Africa.

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After a few miles, or even a few hundred miles,
the seed arrives at the mouth of its river

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and makes its way
through the mangroves to the sea.

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It can voyage through groups of islands
and out into the open sea

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to ride the great ocean currents
for as much as a year and still remain alive.

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Its protective packaging
may become so frayed and tattered

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that it disintegrates and releases the seed.

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But even this is no disaster,
for the seed is able to float by itself.

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Many, doubtless, are lost at sea, but some
eventually reach another, maybe distant, coast.

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This one has landed
on a tropical beach in northern Australia.

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But I've no idea where it came from.
It could be from a tree just up the coast,

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or from another continent.

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Sea-beans are the great success story
of seed distribution.

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Every year they land on the coasts of Europe,
brought by the Gulf Stream from the Caribbean.

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It's too cold for them there
and they seldom germinate.

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But if they land in the tropics,
they will almost certainly grow.

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There's one standing up ahead
on this very beach.

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So some plants send their seeds by sea,

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some by air,

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but most, in fact, use living couriers.

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Animals with hairy coats are easily conscripted.

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The burdock uses hooks, hundreds of them.

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And very effective they are.

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Eventually, the burrs are licked off,
picked off or shaken off.

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If the burdock is lucky, that'll happen
some distance from where the adult plant grew.

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Trousers will serve just as well as hairy coats,
and shoes as hooves or paws.

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Here in southern Africa, there's a creeper
that uses not hooks but spikes,

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waiting for you to tread on them.

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These things are called by the local people
devil thorns, and you can quite see why.

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If you trod on that with your naked foot, whether
you're human or animal, it must be very painful.

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But if you think that's bad, what about this?

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(THREATENING MUSIC)

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This is the seed case of the grapple plant.

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Animals with cleft hooves or relatively soft pads

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can be crippled by the grapple plant.

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But the bony, scaly feet of ostrich
are particularly tough.

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They can carry this vicious hitch-hiker
for many miles without any ill effects.

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But there's another way of treating messengers.

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Instead of relying on chance encounters,
you can entice them with tempting rewards.

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Ants are indefatigable workers.

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Many plants in the dry heathlands
of southern Africa engage them as carriers,

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by attaching a small reward of ant food
to the end of their seeds.

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If a seed lies out in the open for long here,
a mouse or some other rodent will eat it.

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If it's to survive, it must get below ground
quickly, and the ants take it there.

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The fleshy bit at the end is all the ants want,
the rest is of no interest to them.

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The seed has a safe resting place
and an ideal position to germinate,

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just below the surface of the ground.

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Plants bribe larger animals, too, including us.

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And what's more,
they force us to fit in with their timetable.

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This blackberry, for example, is not yet ready
for my services, so its fruits are still sour.

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But as the seeds complete their development,
the flesh around them sweetens

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and announces the fact by changing colour.

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The seeds will be more widely distributed if the
plant is visited by a succession of messengers

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than if it's stripped on a single visit by just one.

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So its berries do not all ripen simultaneously.

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Birds find them irresistible,

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and quickly spot them,
for black is a very conspicuous colour.

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And so, too, is red.

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Birds see colour in much the way we do.
What is vivid to them is vivid to us.

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So rowans and yews, strawberries and plums,
cherries and hawthorns

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use red or black
to summon birds to collect their fruit.

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Tropical figs produce much smaller fruit
than their European relative

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and, unusually, as they ripen they turn yellow.

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Even so, their message is widely understood.

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A tropical fig tree in fruit
is a huge bonanza in the forest.

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All kinds of diners come to the tree.

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As well as fruit-eating birds,
they attract all kinds of mammals,

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monkeys, squirrels and gibbons.

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The rhinoceros hornbill, in order to eat
such small fruit with such a huge beak,

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has to be a bit of a juggler.

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Now comes the important part,
as far as the fig is concerned.

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Dozens of fruits, containing hundreds of seeds,

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are ferried away in the hornbill's crop
for many miles.

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The flesh of the fruit will be digested,

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then the indigestible bits, including the seeds,
will be voided in a distant place in the forest.

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Not all forest canopies, however,

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have such a rich variety of fruit-eaters
to serve as messengers as there are in Borneo.

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In New Guinea, there are very few
mammals and no monkeys at all.

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The biggest creature on the forest floor
is not an antelope or a great ape, it's a bird -

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the cassowary.

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Both male and female cassowaries
have vividly coloured wattles.

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The similarity between them
and the fruits which are its main food

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may not be mere coincidence.

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The wattles serve as social signals
between the birds.

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Did plants exploit that by adopting
the same colours to call attention to their fruit?

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Or was it the other way round?
Do the cassowaries attract their mates

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by reminding them of a good meal?

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No one can say for sure.

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What is certain is that cassowaries have
no difficulty finding objects with these colours

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scattered among the leaves.

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Visual signals, however,
have their limitations as advertisements.

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00:28:30,760 --> 00:28:35,072
In thick forest you just can't see them
unless you're quite close.

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00:28:35,240 --> 00:28:38,869
But there's another medium for messages, smell.

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It may not be so precise,
but it works over much greater distances.

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In Borneo, one fruit produces a smell so pungent

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that a sensitive nose can detect it
from half a mile away.

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And some people like the taste of that fruit
so much that they will walk for miles to find it.

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And so will others.

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Durian!

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(THEY SPEAK IN A LOCAL LANGUAGE)

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00:29:26,280 --> 00:29:30,159
This is it, the famous durian.

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I have to say, the smell,
to my nostrils at any rate, is fairly disgusting.

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An open sewer with a dash of coal gas
is a fair description.

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But that comes from the rind,
that's the advertisement.

226
00:29:52,920 --> 00:29:55,309
This is the fruit and...

227
00:29:57,360 --> 00:29:59,920
..and that's very different.

228
00:30:00,080 --> 00:30:02,833
In fact, it's really pretty good.

229
00:30:03,960 --> 00:30:10,718
A kind of a slimy caramel cream, perhaps,
would be a description of this.

230
00:30:18,560 --> 00:30:26,035
But if all Europeans aren't instantly
durian addicts, all orang utan are.

231
00:31:15,960 --> 00:31:19,953
Animals may carry seeds
for long distances in their stomachs,

232
00:31:20,120 --> 00:31:23,078
but most get rid of them largely at random,

233
00:31:23,240 --> 00:31:27,756
and for some plants,
that is simply not good enough.

234
00:31:33,120 --> 00:31:39,036
The fruits of the trewia tree that grow
in the forests of Nepal have a particular problem.

235
00:31:39,200 --> 00:31:42,875
Their seeds cannot germinate
and grow in deep shade.

236
00:31:43,040 --> 00:31:47,955
They have to be taken out of the forest
into a clearing to stand a chance.

237
00:31:48,120 --> 00:31:51,351
There is one big animal
that will do that for them.

238
00:31:52,640 --> 00:31:55,279
The great Indian rhinoceros.

239
00:32:02,520 --> 00:32:07,913
It's so fond of these fruits
that they're called, locally, "rhino apples".

240
00:32:13,720 --> 00:32:17,713
The rhinos usually feed in the forest
in the heat of the day,

241
00:32:17,880 --> 00:32:21,589
but in the cool of the evening,
they habitually move out

242
00:32:21,760 --> 00:32:25,469
onto the open grasslands that fringe the rivers.

243
00:32:44,360 --> 00:32:47,352
The grasslands are created by monsoon floods

244
00:32:47,520 --> 00:32:50,990
that, every few years,
wash away parts of the forest.

245
00:32:51,160 --> 00:32:54,391
Rhinos visit them for the rich grazing.

246
00:33:02,920 --> 00:33:06,879
And out here,
on regularly used communal middens,

247
00:33:07,040 --> 00:33:10,589
they perform the last of their daily duties.

248
00:33:16,000 --> 00:33:21,950
And there, neatly deposited with a ration
of fertilising manure, are the seeds of the trewia.

249
00:33:26,800 --> 00:33:31,510
So young trewias sprout in open country
on the rhinos' dunghills.

250
00:33:31,680 --> 00:33:38,199
In due course, other trees will grow up around
them and the forest will colonise the grasslands.

251
00:33:38,360 --> 00:33:42,239
And then the trewia fruit, once more,
will have a problem,

252
00:33:42,400 --> 00:33:45,836
and once more rely on the rhino to solve it.

253
00:33:46,000 --> 00:33:52,189
Sadly, this magnificent animal
is getting rarer and rarer.

254
00:33:52,360 --> 00:33:58,595
Over millions of years of evolution,
the trewia tree has established a link with it.

255
00:33:58,760 --> 00:34:02,673
But if the great Indian rhinoceros
becomes extinct,

256
00:34:02,840 --> 00:34:06,753
there's a great risk
that the trewia itself will disappear

257
00:34:06,920 --> 00:34:11,436
from the grasslands and river-banks
of southern Nepal.

258
00:34:20,640 --> 00:34:26,237
In Africa, elephants, similarly,
have become crucial partners for acacias.

259
00:34:26,400 --> 00:34:32,032
That may seem surprising, for they're
only too obviously great destroyers of acacias.

260
00:34:32,200 --> 00:34:33,872
When food is short,

261
00:34:34,040 --> 00:34:39,239
they use their bulk and strength
to knock the trees down to eat their branches.

262
00:34:39,400 --> 00:34:44,952
But without elephants,
some species of acacia would barely survive.

263
00:34:50,040 --> 00:34:53,430
Each year,
acacias produce huge crops of seeds,

264
00:34:53,600 --> 00:34:56,319
and lots of animals come to feed on them.

265
00:35:03,280 --> 00:35:08,479
Inside the pods,
the seeds are threatened by serious enemies.

266
00:35:08,640 --> 00:35:13,668
These - little beetle grubs
that hatched from eggs injected into the pods.

267
00:35:13,840 --> 00:35:17,913
They will now eat all the seeds,
unless they're stopped.

268
00:35:21,920 --> 00:35:27,790
Monkeys eat pods, seeds and grubs,
chewing the whole lot very thoroughly.

269
00:35:27,960 --> 00:35:32,317
The acacia gets little benefit
from providing them with meals.

270
00:35:34,800 --> 00:35:37,439
But elephants are different.

271
00:35:42,080 --> 00:35:46,198
They greatly relish the seed pods,
which are highly nutritious,

272
00:35:46,360 --> 00:35:53,596
and they go to considerable trouble to pick up
what must be, to them, very fiddly little things.

273
00:35:55,480 --> 00:36:00,110
But they don't grind up their food
into such a fine mash as monkeys do.

274
00:36:00,280 --> 00:36:03,795
And, having fed, they move on.

275
00:36:18,520 --> 00:36:24,072
They may well walk several miles before,
having digested their huge meals,

276
00:36:24,240 --> 00:36:26,435
they get rid of the remains.

277
00:36:40,600 --> 00:36:46,197
These acacia seeds have spent
at least 24 hours inside an elephant's stomach.

278
00:36:46,360 --> 00:36:51,718
That hasn't harmed them,
but it has killed stone dead those beetle grubs.

279
00:36:51,880 --> 00:36:58,115
In fact, the elephant's digestive juices
have disinfected these seeds just as efficiently

280
00:36:58,280 --> 00:37:02,831
as a farmer does
when he dresses his seeds with insecticide.

281
00:37:13,720 --> 00:37:18,032
90% of acacia seeds in elephant dung germinate.

282
00:37:18,200 --> 00:37:23,752
Those in pods left uneaten on the ground
will nearly all be killed by beetle grubs.

283
00:37:23,920 --> 00:37:28,516
So acacia seeds eaten by an elephant
have not merely been transported,

284
00:37:28,680 --> 00:37:32,355
they've been saved from near-certain death.

285
00:37:38,560 --> 00:37:44,157
Some seeds, however, are so well protected
that it seems nothing could eat them.

286
00:37:45,160 --> 00:37:48,914
These capsules,
themselves as hard as cannon-balls,

287
00:37:49,080 --> 00:37:55,110
contain the individually armoured seeds,
the nuts, of the Brazil nut tree.

288
00:38:18,320 --> 00:38:22,552
Even a fall of a couple of hundred feet
doesn't crack them.

289
00:38:22,720 --> 00:38:26,315
Only one animal
has the equipment to open them -

290
00:38:28,320 --> 00:38:30,231
the agouti.

291
00:38:45,800 --> 00:38:51,158
The agouti has two pairs of front teeth
that are as sharp as chisels,

292
00:38:51,320 --> 00:38:56,394
and they enable it to gnaw a hole
into the capsule and get at the seeds.

293
00:39:05,840 --> 00:39:09,515
But the Brazil nut tree
has a way of protecting its seeds

294
00:39:09,680 --> 00:39:12,990
from the only animal
that can penetrate its armour.

295
00:39:13,160 --> 00:39:16,391
It presents it with 15 or 20 nuts,

296
00:39:16,560 --> 00:39:20,872
far more than an individual agouti
could eat in one sitting.

297
00:39:21,600 --> 00:39:25,513
And the agouti has a habit
which exactly suits the Brazil nut.

298
00:39:25,680 --> 00:39:30,834
It prudently buries what it can't eat at once,
to save it for another time.

299
00:39:31,920 --> 00:39:36,710
But it doesn't have a perfect memory.
It loses track of what it's buried,

300
00:39:36,880 --> 00:39:40,555
and a significant proportion of the nuts
survive to sprout.

301
00:39:42,720 --> 00:39:45,518
The alpine nutcracker, a kind of crow,

302
00:39:45,680 --> 00:39:50,117
is an even more obliging partner
for the arolla pine.

303
00:39:54,080 --> 00:40:00,394
The bird knows exactly how to open the cones
and pick out the ripe seeds.

304
00:40:12,600 --> 00:40:16,354
Each one is swallowed,
but it doesn't go into the stomach.

305
00:40:16,520 --> 00:40:21,469
It's stored in the crop
while the bird tackles the next.

306
00:40:28,120 --> 00:40:32,193
And then, like the agouti,
the bird hides them, one by one,

307
00:40:32,360 --> 00:40:35,636
as provisions to help it through hard times.

308
00:40:38,480 --> 00:40:43,395
But unlike the agouti, it regularly carries
the seeds away from the forest,

309
00:40:43,560 --> 00:40:45,710
up onto open ground,

310
00:40:45,880 --> 00:40:50,078
perhaps because there it can
more easily memorise landmarks,

311
00:40:50,240 --> 00:40:52,993
to help it find the seeds again months later.

312
00:40:53,160 --> 00:40:57,233
And some of these places
suit the young trees very well.

313
00:41:06,760 --> 00:41:11,515
One by one,
the bird brings them up from its crop.

314
00:41:11,680 --> 00:41:16,549
It buries them at just the right depth
that suits the seed.

315
00:41:16,720 --> 00:41:22,556
And it carefully fills in the hole
to conceal its treasure from other seed-eaters.

316
00:41:29,040 --> 00:41:33,477
So the seeds of the arolla pine
are carried far from the parent tree

317
00:41:33,640 --> 00:41:37,758
and planted with all the care
a human forester might give them,

318
00:41:37,920 --> 00:41:43,836
not only in high alpine meadows, but in places
humans might find very difficult to reach,

319
00:41:44,000 --> 00:41:47,072
high up on the mountain ridges.

320
00:41:49,640 --> 00:41:54,430
Yet some plants succeed in reaching
seemingly inaccessible sites

321
00:41:54,600 --> 00:42:00,277
without the help of any animal
and entirely by their own exertions.

322
00:42:02,880 --> 00:42:07,431
A crack in a wall 50 feet above the ground
is not easy to reach,

323
00:42:07,600 --> 00:42:12,628
but the ivy-leaved toadflax
nonetheless manages to get there.

324
00:42:14,160 --> 00:42:20,633
It has no suckers like Virginia creeper to help it
climb up here, no clinging roots like ivy.

325
00:42:20,800 --> 00:42:27,751
Its colonies manage to advance up the wall
from crack to crack in an entirely different way.

326
00:42:28,600 --> 00:42:31,160
As the petals of its flowers fall off,

327
00:42:31,320 --> 00:42:34,869
the seeds within the capsule beneath
begin to develop.

328
00:42:35,040 --> 00:42:39,477
And then the toadflax behaves
in a most remarkable fashion.

329
00:42:40,760 --> 00:42:46,073
It finds the nearest crack
and plants its seeds itself.

330
00:42:53,160 --> 00:42:58,518
So, one way or another, plants get their seeds
to the best places to germinate.

331
00:42:58,680 --> 00:43:04,198
But they have another question to settle -
what is the best time to do so?

332
00:43:04,360 --> 00:43:08,114
These proteas growing here
on the southern tip of Africa

333
00:43:08,280 --> 00:43:13,991
have had their seeds ready and waiting
inside the seed pods for several years now.

334
00:43:14,160 --> 00:43:16,196
Why haven't they released them?

335
00:43:16,360 --> 00:43:20,512
Well, the best moment to do so
is about to arrive.

336
00:43:36,920 --> 00:43:40,037
There are several species of protea here,

337
00:43:40,200 --> 00:43:44,671
and they all depend
upon the arrival of seasonal fires.

338
00:44:13,160 --> 00:44:17,312
The fire has killed
all the adult plants on this land,

339
00:44:17,480 --> 00:44:21,189
so this is an excellent time
for seeds to germinate.

340
00:44:21,360 --> 00:44:24,079
There are no established competitors.

341
00:44:24,240 --> 00:44:28,472
In fact, it's the only time
that protea seeds can germinate,

342
00:44:28,640 --> 00:44:35,079
because these seed-heads have to be burnt
before they will release their seeds.

343
00:44:35,960 --> 00:44:40,590
And an hour or so after scorching,
the heads open.

344
00:45:09,040 --> 00:45:15,752
All around lies a rich ash which will make
an excellent and nutritious bed for the seeds.

345
00:45:16,760 --> 00:45:22,198
Protea seeds can remain inert
and apparently lifeless for many years,

346
00:45:22,360 --> 00:45:26,319
and then spring into life
when the right conditions arrive.

347
00:45:26,480 --> 00:45:28,198
Not all seeds can do that.

348
00:45:28,360 --> 00:45:32,558
Some will die after two or three years,
whatever the conditions.

349
00:45:32,720 --> 00:45:37,669
But others are able to remain alive
for astonishing periods.

350
00:45:37,840 --> 00:45:44,712
One of the most remarkable examples
comes from an archaeological site here in Japan.

351
00:45:47,160 --> 00:45:48,718
2,000 years ago,

352
00:45:48,880 --> 00:45:54,796
a small settlement with buildings like these
stood at a place called Asada.

353
00:46:03,080 --> 00:46:05,719
The people who lived here in such houses

354
00:46:05,880 --> 00:46:09,509
had only just begun to master
the art of working metal.

355
00:46:09,680 --> 00:46:14,879
They were also among the first people in Japan
who knew how to plant and reap rice.

356
00:46:15,040 --> 00:46:19,158
And they stored their harvests
in small pits in the ground.

357
00:46:21,760 --> 00:46:26,117
In one of those pits
they found some seeds like these.

358
00:46:26,280 --> 00:46:30,558
These are rice grains.
They're black and obviously dead.

359
00:46:30,720 --> 00:46:34,156
But this is a magnolia seed.

360
00:46:34,320 --> 00:46:40,668
Scientists took away that strange, ancient seed,
planted it and it grew.

361
00:46:42,520 --> 00:46:49,358
At first it looked like Magnolia kobus, the wild
species that still grows in Japanese woods.

362
00:46:49,520 --> 00:46:53,832
But then, in its tenth year,
it produced its first flower buds.

363
00:46:54,000 --> 00:46:59,120
These, when they opened,
would reveal exactly what it was.

364
00:47:15,840 --> 00:47:20,630
Magnolia kobus today
typically has six petals on its flowers.

365
00:47:20,800 --> 00:47:24,475
But this flower has an extra petal, seven.

366
00:47:24,640 --> 00:47:26,676
And this has eight.

367
00:47:26,840 --> 00:47:30,071
Is this a consequence of its long sleep,

368
00:47:30,240 --> 00:47:35,075
or were all Magnolia kobus 2,000 years ago
variable like this?

369
00:47:35,240 --> 00:47:38,835
Or could it be that this is an ancient species

370
00:47:39,000 --> 00:47:44,358
that has only survived
as that one, lone seed in an archaeological ruin?

371
00:47:44,520 --> 00:47:47,193
It's too early to know the answer,

372
00:47:47,360 --> 00:47:52,036
but whatever it is,
this is surely a marvellous example

373
00:47:52,200 --> 00:47:57,638
of the fact that plants, with their seeds,
are not only extraordinary travellers in space,

374
00:47:57,800 --> 00:48:01,031
but incomparable travellers in time.

375
00:48:02,305 --> 00:48:08,482
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