“It seems to me that the natural world is the greatest source of excitement; the greatest source of visual beauty; the greatest source of intellectual interest. It is the greatest source of much in life that makes life worth living.”
In just one day, one large tree can draw as much as 100 gallons of water from the surrounding ground and recycle it back into the air, in the form of life-giving water vapour. Trees provide food and shelter for wild animals in the area. Temperatures in an area shaded by trees can be anywhere from 11-25°C (20-45°F) cooler than the same area in direct sunlight, depending on the time of day. Dendrochronology — the dating of trees by analyzing tree rings — has shown many trees to be older than entire generations of people living in the area.
Tree rings do more than reveal a tree’s age. They’re a historical record of natural history, everything from volcanic eruptions to drought. There are ancient woodlands in England, increasingly under threat from development, that date back to the 1600s and the reign of James VI.
Trees help combat flooding by capturing and storing excessive amounts of rainfall, both in the canopy and in their often labyrinthine tangle of roots that anchor the tree to the ground and nurture its growth.
It should come as little surprise, then — though some TV watchers admit to being exactly that — that David Attenborough’s next landmark natural history series, The Green Planet, will be about trees, and how they quite literally provide the roots of life. Attenborough’s stirring series Seven Worlds, One Planet has yet to air in the US — its BBC America debut is Jan. 18 — but the seeds have already been planted for Green Planet, which will bow on UK television in late 2021.
One of the undeniable appeals of Attenborough’s nature programs is the way they show the connection between animals and people.
With this new series, though, Attenborough faces a new challenge. He will show, among other things, how some trees seem to “talk” to each other, such as the way certain willows will emit a chemical substance when attacked by parasitical webworms, alerting other willows in the area to produce a substance called tannin, which makes their leaves harder for webworms to digest.
John Wyndham’s 1950s post-apocalyptic classic The Day of the Triffids envisioned a future world where sentient plants slowly absorb other forms of life, and threaten to take over the planet — revenge, some
believe, for humankind’s despoiling the natural world around them.
Read into Day of the Triffids what you will: Attenborough’s point is that while scientists know much about trees, little of that knowledge has passed on to the general public. Trees are something we collectively take for granted.
“This is a wonderful opportunity to explore a neglected yet truly remarkable part of the natural world,” Attenborough said this week in a statement prepared for the BBC. The Green Planet will be Planet Earth from the perspective of plants.
It’s designed to be “an immersive portrayal” of an unseen, largely hidden interconnected world, full of the kind of quirky behaviour, gripping stories and surprising heroes audiences have grown used to seeing in past Attenborough series like Blue Planet and Life on Earth. The idea is to take audiences into a world, beyond the imagination, and see things, in the words of program producer and veteran Attenborough collaborator Mike Gunton, “no eye has ever seen.”
“The world of plants is a mind-blowing parallel universe; one that we can now bring to life using a whole range of exciting new camera technology,” Gunton said.
Filming locations range from Croatia and Costa Rica to the US and northern Europe, and will encompass deserts and mountains, rainforests and the frozen north. Attenborough will be at each location in person, guiding the viewer through what for many will be a brave new world.
Attenborough will meet the largest living things that have ever existed, in Gunton’s words, “. . .trees that care for each other; and plants that breed so fast they could cover the planet in a matter of months. He will find time-travellers — seeds that can outlive civilizations, and plants that remain unchanged for deceased. He will examine our relationship with plants, past, present and future, and reveal how all animal life, ourselves included, is totally dependent on plants.”
Attenborough will turn 94 in May.
“I’ve had the most extraordinary life,” he admits in the new Netflix documentary David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet. “It’s only now that I appreciate how extraordinary.”
©DarkWorkX-Pixabay