The Green Planet

BBC – The Green Planet

Information
Dive into a world where a single life can last a thousand years, with David Attenborough. See things no eye has ever seen, and discover the dramatic, beautiful plant life of Earth.

Part 1: Tropical Worlds
More kinds of plants are crammed together in the tropical rainforests than anywhere else on Earth. The result is astonishing beauty and intense competition – a plant battleground. New filming techniques allow us to enter the plants’ world and see it from their perspective and on their timescale. From fast-growing trees to flowers that mimic dead animals, this is a journey into a magical world that operates on a different timescale to our own.

Part 2: Water Worlds
Water plants create some of the most beautiful, bizarre and important habitats on earth. To hold on in torrents, plants use a kind of superglue. Some are armed with vicious weapons to fight titanic battles for space. Others form perfect spheres and escape from animal enemies by rolling. Where nutrients are washed away, plants turn into hunters of animals, laying traps and even counting to ensure their success. Brilliantly coloured flowers smother lakes, and in one magical river in Brazil, the water bubbles like champagne as plants create the atmosphere itself.

Part 3: Seasonal Worlds
The strategy, deception and feats of engineering plants use to thrive in the changing weather of different seasons. In the face of conditions ranging from ice and snow to raging fires, survival is often a question of perfect timing – particularly when contending with intense competition and surprising predators.

Part 4: Desert Worlds
Plants that have developed to thrive in the desert, including cacti that grow in the shade of other trees and collect water in pleated trunks that expand and contract – but can also find themselves a host to other plants, like desert mistletoe. The programme also reveals how tobacco plants being eaten by caterpillars are able to summon the creatures’ natural predators, and how tumbleweeds roll across the landscape, only unfurling and growing when they encounter rain.

Part 5: Human Worlds
A guide to plants that thrive in human-dominated environments, including trees that grow across canyons in India, which have developed into living bridges. The programme examines the origins of growing crops and the ongoing influence on the world of wild plants, as well as efforts to preserve species, from snipers firing pesticide bullets from helicopters to fend off invasive plants to plants being painstakingly pollinated using a paintbrush.