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00:00The biggest living thing that exists on this planet is a plant, like this giant sequoia
00:17tree in California. Plants, whether they are enormous, like this one, or microscopic, are
00:28the basis of all life, including ourselves. We depend upon them for every mouthful of food
00:35that we eat and every lungful of air that we breathe. Plants flourish in remarkable ways,
00:47yet for the most part, the secrets of their world have been hidden from us, until now.
00:58Now, we have new groundbreaking technology that enables us to enter their extraordinary
01:07world and see their lives from their perspective. This series will reveal the extraordinary and
01:23dramatic ways in which plants behave. And we will explore the challenges demanded by the
01:35very different landscapes in which they live. The tropics. The richest and most competitive
01:46place in which to survive. The bizarre water world. Where giants fight ferocious battles,
02:01and plants eat animals alive. Deserts. Up. A world of extremes. Seasonal lands. Where survival
02:23depends on precision timing. And everywhere we will explore the critical and intimate relationships
02:33between plants and animals, including ourselves. Join me in a world that takes you by surprise.
02:46to see our planet as never before. From the plant's perspective. This is the green planet.
03:11I mean, in a world that regions. People will stay for rare. The corridor andittäels have no
03:36I'm in Costa Rica, in the heart of a rainforest, the richest and most dynamic environment on Earth.
04:01Rainforests only cover a very small proportion of the Earth's surface, yet they contain over
04:08half of all known species of animals and plants.
04:15Up here, the forest canopy is bathed by life-giving sunlight.
04:26The branches of the great trees carry rich, flourishing sky gardens, home to countless
04:38different kinds of beautiful plants.
04:44Each species has evolved its own exquisite solution to the challenges of survival.
04:56This forest world may look peaceful, timeless and unchanging, but that is far from the truth.
05:07This is a battlefield.
05:14Throughout this forest, plants are competing ferociously with one another to claim the light.
05:20The battle is at its fiercest on the forest floor, where only two percent of the sunlight
05:34filters through.
05:37Plants here have to bide their time.
05:45The opportunity comes when an old tree dies.
05:54When that happens, sunlight floods the forest floor for the first time in perhaps a hundred
06:00years.
06:20The seedling's wait is over.
06:27The seedling must now race skywards and claim a place in the canopy.
06:34But it's not alone.
06:40Rivals are everywhere, each with its own survival strategy.
06:52Some plants, like this monstera, stretch out divided leaves to collect what light they
07:04can.
07:11This vine is groping blindly around with its tendrils.
07:19It attempts to reach the light by hitching a ride.
07:26Its tendrils are highly sensitive to touch.
07:35And a suitable target is in range.
07:42Got it.
07:48The vine tightens its grip and begins to haul itself upwards.
08:07But it's now overtaken by the forest's fastest growing tree, a young balsa.
08:28It's giant leaves are already 40 centimeters across and are stealing the light from its rivals
08:35below.
08:37But the balsa's battle is not yet won.
08:41Other different vines are lying in wait.
08:58Each is armed with dozens of claw-like hooks.
09:02If just one hook gets a grip, the vine will be able to smother its victim.
09:12To be continued.
09:13To be continued.
09:14To be continued.
09:15To be continued.
09:16To be continued.
09:45But the balsa is defended by a shield of slippery hairs.
09:56The vine's hooks just can't get a hold.
10:02The balsa brushes them aside and continues to rush skywards.
10:15Leaving the losers in its shadow to fight among themselves.
10:24This balsa has won its battle for the light.
10:33And it's done so in a little over a year.
10:39Most trees would have grown an inch or so in that time.
10:42But this one is already 30 feet, 10 meters tall.
10:52Balsas owe their success to the special character of their wood.
10:58If this section of tree trunk came from a hardwood tree,
11:02it would be really quite heavy.
11:04But as it is, it's from balsa.
11:06It's from balsa.
11:07And it's really very light.
11:11And that's because of its internal structure.
11:17Under the microscope, balsa wood looks like a honeycomb.
11:22It contains more air than wood.
11:24So not only can it grow very fast, but it gets the maximum height for minimum weight.
11:35But fast growth needs something else.
11:38Fuel.
11:39And lots of it.
11:40Lots of it.
11:51That fuel is created in a plant's leaves as they soak up the sun.
11:56It's a process called photosynthesis.
12:13A chemical reaction that is the basis of all life on Earth.
12:18Leaves are covered by thousands of microscopic pores called stomata.
12:31When open, they extract carbon dioxide from the air and, using energy from the sun,
12:38combine it with nutrients to build the plant's tissues.
12:41And, critically for us, the process releases the oxygen that we, and all animals, need in order to breathe.
13:05But for plants, there is a downside.
13:07These precious, energy-packed leaves attract predators.
13:13In every shape.
13:17Size.
13:21And agility.
13:22Agility.
13:36A sloth can only move slowly.
13:40But you don't need speed to gather leaves, and it eats nothing else.
13:52The plants here are under constant attack from all kinds of leaf eaters.
14:11But the most voracious, by far, is hardly ever seen.
14:15It consumes 50,000 leaves every day.
14:21It's created this great clearing in the forest.
14:25And it lives just beneath my feet.
14:28It's called Leuco Agaricus.
14:41It's neither animal nor plant.
14:47It's a fungus.
14:48It lives five meters underground, far from the leaves that it devours.
15:00To get them, it employs the best leaf gatherers in the tropics.
15:05Leaf cutter ants.
15:19Millions of them provide the fungus with its food,
15:23and in return, the fungus cultivates tiny mushrooms as food for the ants.
15:28The fungus releases chemical signals that tell the worker ants what type of leaf it wants to eat.
15:43Scouts are sent out with the latest orders.
15:46Worker ants will travel hundreds of meters to find the right kind.
16:02Today's crop is being taken from a young bixar tree.
16:09Just a few years old and still battling to reach the canopy,
16:12it can ill afford to lose any of its leaves.
16:34Between them, the ants can demolish a large leaf in a matter of minutes.
16:42The sound of cutting attracts more ants.
17:01Now the pieces are carried back to the underground fungus.
17:12The ants can run at speeds of two meters a minute.
17:20And each can carry a load ten times its own weight.
17:23It's a river of leaves across the jungle floor.
17:24Part of a vast network that extends for miles through the forest.
17:25It's a river of leaves across the jungle floor.
17:44Part of a vast network that extends for miles through the forest.
17:48To avoid congestion, worker ants dig trenches around obstacles.
17:50To avoid congestion, worker ants dig trenches around obstacles.
18:03To avoid congestion, worker ants dig Venice.
18:09You don't have a bit of trouble предлагate them for the forest.
18:13You don't have to be afraid of running them,
18:15you don't have to be afraid of how the dangerous thing is.
18:17The types of animals will end up being used to be used.
18:18The birds have to be where people are still alive.
18:20So, the birds have to be used to it,
18:22and they just walk away from a creek.
18:24Then people are not being used to them.
18:26The birds have to increase the birds off day.
18:27The birds have to be used to be used to it.
18:28Thousands of pieces are delivered every hour to the waiting fungus.
18:49Fed by such a continuous supply, the fungus grows rapidly, filling the chambers in which
18:55it lives, so the ants excavate more space.
19:07It seems that the fungus has the upper hand, and the bixer tree will not survive.
19:20But it fights back, using chemical warfare.
19:27The bixer tree floods its leaves with toxins that could kill the distant fungus.
19:38As the ants carry the fragments back, they are themselves poisoning the fungus on the
19:43tree's behalf.
19:46It's a long-distance attack.
19:56As the poison takes effect, the ants sense that their fungus is weakening.
20:11And they respond to its signals by changing to another source of leaves.
20:26So the plant's chemical response forces the ants to constantly switch from tree to tree.
20:39Strike and counter-strike.
20:45And that ensures that enough leaves remain uneaten for each tree to recover.
20:54Once a plant becomes adult, it can switch its energies from growth to reproduction.
21:14The tropical forests of the Americas stretch from Mexico to the southern reaches of the Amazon.
21:27They contain more than 100,000 different species of plant.
21:33Each with its own particular survival strategy.
21:40One species that has adopted a grow-fast lifestyle flourishes throughout this vast region.
21:50The balsa.
21:51The balsa.
21:54But it has to pay a high price for doing so.
21:57The lightweight wood that enables it to grow at such speed is not strong and is easily broken.
22:04The balsa.
22:05The balsa.
22:06Few balsas live longer than 20 years.
22:11This one is approaching the end of its brief life.
22:15So the time has come for it to reproduce.
22:19It has used a huge amount of energy to produce some of the most extravagant flowers in the forest.
22:31In immense numbers.
22:33Each is the size of a human hand.
22:47As night falls, the tree prepares an enticing treat.
22:55This is a kinkajou, a kind of fruit-eating raccoon.
23:14Each flower is filled with huge quantities of exceptionally rich nectar, supercharged with sugar.
23:24The kinkajous drink so greedily that they get pollen all over their faces.
23:47So as they move from tree to tree,
23:53they carry pollen with them.
24:02But the balsa leaves little to chance.
24:06The nectar might appear to have run out, but this is just the first round.
24:12Now the balsa refills its flowers, enticing the kinkajous back to repeat the process seven times a night.
24:25Pollination is complete.
24:27And the kinkajous, they also get well served with over a hundred pints of nectar in just a few weeks.
24:42Both plant and animal do well out of this arrangement.
24:48But in the tropical world, that isn't always so.
25:00Borneo.
25:01Here, on the slopes of Mount Kinabalu, live plants that eat animals using pitcher-shaped leaves full of water.
25:16Insects are attracted by the expectation of nectar, but tumble into the pitcher, where they're drowned and absorbed.
25:35On the lower slopes of the mountain, a plant grows that has no leaves at all.
25:46Or even a stem.
25:50All that can be seen is this.
25:53A bud.
25:54A bud.
26:02It is a parasite.
26:12The rest of its body lies within the tissues of a liana on which it feeds.
26:18After about five years, the bud finally opens into a monstrous flower.
26:33It now has only a day or so in which to be pollinated before it starts to wither.
26:41Its petals are the color of blood.
26:44Their surface is tough and warty.
26:54It appears to have fur.
27:00Even whiskers and teeth.
27:07At first sight, it might be mistaken for a dead animal.
27:11This is Rafflesia.
27:16The corpse flower.
27:22A metre across, it's the world's biggest flower.
27:29And this one is a male.
27:34From its centre comes the pungent odour of death.
27:38It's a scent that might not appeal to every animal.
27:56But it's very attractive to carrion flies.
27:59They lay their eggs on rotting flesh.
28:18The scent lures the fly deep into the flower in search of meat.
28:23The fly finds nothing.
28:30The Rafflesia, however, has the fly exactly where it wants it.
28:41It's stuck pollen to the fly's back.
28:43If this male Rafflesia's strategy is to work, the fly carrying its pollen must now visit a female corpse flower.
29:04Such as this one.
29:09Success.
29:10Sun fidaring rays
29:21All right.
29:22ătăaăăe.
29:23dăăăău.
29:29sulcăo coisnă
29:31.
29:33ău
29:36coc.
29:39Once pollinated, plants are able to produce seeds, the next generation, but once again,
29:49there are animals all over the forest that are eager to make a meal of them.
30:09The Malay Archipelago, a vast tropical world of a thousand islands.
30:24It's home to giants, the tallest trees in the tropics, many of which live for centuries.
30:32They produce seeds in enormous numbers, but only do so when the time is right.
30:47This individual hasn't produced a single seed for nearly a decade,
30:52but in the last weeks, it has become festooned with more than 10,000 of them.
31:02Each seed has the potential to produce a giant like its parent.
31:14But success will depend on timing.
31:32Seed hunters are gathering.
31:39Bearded pigs.
31:49But these seeds have been produced by a Dipterocarp.
31:53Trees that create the tropical world's largest seed nursery.
32:06After years of waiting, thousands upon thousands of individual Dipterocarps
32:12have synchronized to produce the next generation, all at exactly the same time.
32:17the same time.
32:36Now, these seeds will face the dangers below together.
32:40together.
33:10By releasing billions of seeds all at the same time,
33:31they swamp the pigs and any other animals
33:34with more than they could possibly eat.
33:40And that buys time
34:00for some of the seeds to take root and sprout.
34:10The tree's strategy has worked,
34:33but a seedling will have to overcome many more dangers over the years
34:39if it too is to become a giant.
34:48And there are many ways in a tropical forest
34:51by which a tree's life can be ended before it reaches its prime.
34:55The northernmost tip of Australia.
35:06This is the world's most ancient rain forest.
35:09Battles between animals and plants have raged here for 180 million years.
35:29So the plants have had time to develop effective defenses.
35:45This is a poison arrow tree.
35:51One of the tropical world's most heavily defended plants.
35:58Its trunk is tall and slippery and exudes a poisonous sap.
36:02It appears to be almost invulnerable.
36:17But even so, just as this individual reaches maturity,
36:22its life has become endangered.
36:24Each monsoon season, it is invaded from above.
36:40It attracts hundreds of shining starlings.
36:47Its immense smooth trunk makes its high branches above a safe place to nest.
36:54But over the years, this has created a major problem for the tree.
37:03After feeding, the starlings return to the nest to digest their food
37:08with inevitable consequences.
37:16Every year, they produce almost a quarter of a ton of droppings.
37:23The toxic chemicals they contain create a dead zone that completely surrounds the tree.
37:38The toxins are absorbed by its roots
37:41and travel up through the trunk and into every leaf.
37:45Branch by branch,
38:03the tree is slowly dying.
38:08It has become a victim of its own success.
38:12It has been poisoned.
38:23Now, a new battle begins.
38:26One, to claim the tree's dead body and the vast amount of nutrients that it contains.
38:36It's a battle that is fought throughout the natural world involving a group of organisms that we rarely notice.
38:43Here, on the floor of a tropical rainforest, it's dark, it's humid, and it's hot.
38:54Ideal conditions for fungi.
38:58We normally think of fungi as things like this, mushrooms of one kind or another.
39:03But these are just the fruiting bodies.
39:09They exist, for most of the time, hidden in the leaf litter and the earth as a network of fine white threads.
39:19The threads of competing fungi envelop their victim's body, releasing enzymes which digest the tree's tissues and unlock the nutrients within.
39:29There are a million or so different species of fungi in the tropics.
39:39Some feed on dead plants.
39:42Others eat them alive.
39:45And some reveal their existence in an eerily beautiful way.
39:50In Africa, in the Congo, this is known as chimpanzee fire.
40:11The mysterious bioluminescent glow becomes brighter as the fungus digests the tree.
40:20When fungi have fed sufficiently, they develop their reproductive organs.
40:23When fungi have fed sufficiently, they develop their reproductive organs.
40:50Each can produce literally billions of spores.
41:03The tiny particles that carry the species' genetic blueprint.
41:10Each spore like this has the potential to kill a tree.
41:20Each presenter is
41:36The spores are so light they can be carried by the slightest aircoons.
41:42At least a billion float above every square meter of rainforest.
41:57Recently, it has been discovered that these spores do far more than just bring death
42:12and decay.
42:15They are, in fact, at the very center of the rainforest's life support system.
42:29High in the humid air, the spores combine with molecules of water.
42:42Gradually, they collect into droplets which, when they are heavy enough, fall and rain.
43:01GASMURA
43:05GASMURA
43:11This is based on the pollution level, on its surface level.
43:18GASMURA
43:22GASMURA
43:27Over two and a half meters of rain falls every year in a rain forest.
43:50And in the center of almost every rain drop, there is a fungal spore.
43:57The world's rainforests are the richest and most dynamic environments on Earth, built
44:18on complex connections and relationships.
44:22But these connections, competitive or collaborative, are now becoming increasingly fragile.
44:31When Charles Darwin was exploring the tropical world nearly 200 years ago, he wrote this in
44:43his diary.
44:44Among the scenes which are deeply impressed on my mind, none exceed in sublimity the primeval
44:50forests undefaced by the hand of man.
44:51He would struggle to find such a place today.
44:57He would struggle to find such a place today.
45:04He would struggle to find such a place today.
45:11Today, 70% of all the world's rainforest plants grow within a mile of a road or a clearing,
45:18that we have cut into the forest.
45:31And this is creating new battlefields in the tropical world.
45:52Alien armies of identical cultivated plants now stand where thousands of different species
45:59once grew.
46:01We have planted vast regiments of crops in order to provide ourselves with food and other commodities.
46:18And the ancient forest has been reduced to ever fewer isolated fragments.
46:29All, however, is not lost.
46:32The fragments can still be sanctuaries, keeping alive the intimate relationships within them.
46:41Their size is nonetheless critical.
46:53This is the seven-hour flower.
47:08This plant produces its flowers at night.
47:11They open at about six o'clock, and each blossom only lasts that night.
47:18It opens for about seven hours, and then it dies.
47:24But during that time, it provides food for one particular animal.
47:29A bat.
47:31And here it is.
47:38During the seven-hour flower's flowering season, Underwood's bat feeds almost exclusively on its nectar.
47:59It is the plant's primary pollinator.
48:04It might seem that this is a fairly evenly balanced relationship, but not so.
48:16The bat likes this nectar because it's sweet, but it's not very nourishing.
48:23So the bat must visit hundreds of flowers a night, and it pollinates them as it feeds.
48:32But if a patch of forest becomes too small, with too few flowers, the bats will disappear.
48:46And without the bats, the flowers can't reproduce and will soon die out.
48:55The partnership is broken.
48:58Life in the forest depends on countless close relationships, but they are increasingly under threat as forests become more fragmented.
49:17The solution, of course, is to join these remaining fragments together again.
49:23Thirty years ago, I came to this exact spot.
49:28This land belonged to a scientific research establishment, and it was covered with grass being grazed by cattle.
49:36The scientists got rid of the cattle and allowed nature to take its course.
49:42Just look at it now.
49:53This new forest has become a bridge that connects several fragments,
49:59allowing plants and animals to both renew old connections and create fresh ones.
50:05Of course, we urgently need to protect what healthy forests still remain.
50:27But looking forward, we must take what may well be our last chance to re-establish the lost rainforest.
50:39And help the tropical world to heal itself.
50:45It will take the cooperation of nations around the world, but it is the only way in which we will be able to preserve the treasures of the tropical rainforest for future generations.
50:58And with it, ultimately protect all life on this, our green planet.
51:06The aim of the green planet team was to take the viewer into the world of plants so that it could be seen from the plants' perspective in a way that had not been possible till now.
51:34That meant developing an entirely new camera system.
51:41And this is the Game Changer, a specially designed robot camera that we affectionately call the Triffid.
51:59The Triffid started life in the garage of an American ex-military engineer, Chris Field.
52:05I've seen quite a few of these Planet Earth-style documentaries, and they always absolutely blew my mind.
52:10Especially the botanic time lapse really spoke to me.
52:14In his spare time, Chris spent a decade building elaborate motion-controlled time-lapse camera rigs and teaching himself how to film plants.
52:24Plants often behave like animals in so many ways.
52:29And being able to see it through time-lapse is one thing, but using the motion control brings you into that time scale.
52:35And we could really see the potential in how we could use this sort of movement to bring plants alive and film them in the same way that we film animals.
52:48Soon, Chris joins the team in a quiet corner of the Devon countryside, and the robot army begins to take shape.
52:59After 40 years of filming time-lapse, these rigs have opened up a whole new world for us.
53:05So it'll be like hovering around something with a drone or a helicopter, but in a time-lapse speed.
53:12The holy grail for us is being able to take this technology out into the wild, trying to get the same sorts of dynamic moves in some of the most extreme environments in the world.
53:23So what we needed to do was develop this technology even further.
53:30Six months later, the Triffid is born.
53:34And with slight trepidation, they hand me the controls.
53:40So that makes it go away, and this makes it come back, and this sends it up.
53:55I think I'd better hand it over to the experts.
54:01Now it's time to put this new member of the team properly through its paces.
54:05The aim here is for Ollie to find a target, aim for it, and fly through it, as if he is a tiny fly going through a hole in a leaf.
54:15Easier said than done.
54:17Oops.
54:18I'm trying to find the target.
54:22Whether the kit's going to stand up to that sort of use, and the abuse that we throw at most pieces of kit, has yet to be seen.
54:30In the studio, it seems to be working pretty well.
54:32But this is only a dress rehearsal.
54:35It's time for the Triffid to face the challenges of the Costa Rican rainforest and leafcutter ants.
54:50We want to film the journey all the way down the trunk, and along this buttress group, and down to their nest.
54:57The team and the Triffid need several days of dry weather, but a storm can hit at any moment, and rain is one thing the Triffid does not like.
55:10The conditions that we're working in now are a little bit more challenging than the studio.
55:19All the ground is really bumpy.
55:21We've got loads of plants in a way.
55:23I know we're making a series about plants, but sometimes they're a complete pain in the neck.
55:27The Triffid needs to be programmed to capture images from 7,000 different camera positions on the ants' trail.
55:39Just one drop of rain on the lens, or a wobble, and the whole process will have to start again.
55:45I think this is when we're going to find out if our ambition outweighs our ability.
55:52For the crew, the ambition is certainly high.
55:58Fortunately, it's all down to the Triffid now.
56:05We've been filming the ants with the Triffid for eight days now, and we're on our third set-up.
56:21It's pretty slow going.
56:24While the Triffid seems to be handling the pressure well,
56:27for the crew, trying to take a tree's-eye view of ants is turning into a bit of a nightmare.
56:35Wake up. Film ants. Go to sleep.
56:38Dream of ants. Wake up, film ants. Sleep.
56:42Dream of ants. Wake up, film ants.
56:44Go to sleep. Dream of ants.
56:50After two weeks in the jungle, ambition and ability finally come together.
56:55For the Triffid, at least.
56:58Thousands of individual images creating a single extraordinary time lapse.
57:05One that follows a river of leaves across the jungle floor from a unique perspective.
57:16For the Triffid, this was just the beginning.
57:21Take a bow, Triffid.
57:25Next time on The Green Planet, the wonder of water worlds.
57:37Where plants hunt.
57:41Go on the move.
57:44Fight.
57:47And create the air we breathe.
57:49The Open University has produced a poster that explores the vital role that plants have for our planet.
58:01To order your free copy, call 0300 303 4200 or go to bbc.co.uk forward slash green planet and follow the links to The Open University.
58:15Into those water worlds here next Sunday at seven.
58:17Later tonight, see beauty off world.
58:19Looking up for the first time in 2022.
58:21The new sky at night is across on BBC 4 at 10.
58:23Here next, a demanding house guest tests her sister's patience.
58:25The new series of Call the Midwife continues in a tick.
58:35The new series of Call the Midwife continues in a tick.
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