Join or Sign In
Sign in to customize your TV listings
By joining TV Guide, you agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy.

3D technology reveals a whole new dimension in the lives of plants, from the most bizarre to the most beautiful. In this sensational series, shot over the course of a year, David Attenborough explores their fascinating world. Using 3D time-lapse and pioneering techniques in 3D macro photography, he traces them from their beginnings on land to their vital place in nature today, exposing new revelations along the way. He moves from our time scale to theirs, revealing the true nature of plants as creatures that are every bit as dynamic and aggressive as animals. David discovers a microscopic world that's invisible to the naked eye, where insects feed and breed, where flowers fluoresce and where plants communicate with each other and with animals using scent and sound. He meets the extraordinary animals and fungi that have unbreakable ties with the plant world, from hawk moths and bats to tiny poison dart frogs, a giant tortoise and a fungus that can control the mind. And he does all this in one unique place, a microcosm of the whole plant world where, some 90% of all known plant species are represented: The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. This spectacular adventure through the Kingdom of Plants is so immersive and compelling it has the capacity to amaze even the least green-fingered.
Loading. Please wait...
Episode 1
David begins his journey inside the magnificent Palm House, a unique global rainforest in London. Here, he explores the extraordinary plants that are so well adapted to wet and humid environments and unravels the intimate relationships between wet zone plants and the animals that depend on them. It was in the wet zones of the world that plants first moved on to land and in the Waterlily House David reveals how flowers first evolved some 140 million years ago. Watching a kaleidoscope of breath-taking time-lapses of these most primitive of flowers swelling and blooming in 3D, he is able to piece together the very first evolutionary steps that plants took to employ a wealth of insects to carry their precious pollen for the first time. David discovers clues to answer a question that even had Charles Darwin stumped: how did flowering plants evolve so fast to go on to colonise the entire planet so successfully? He marvels with signature enthusiasm at orchids, plants at the very pinnacle of the plant tree of life. Many of these captivating flowers evolved to be pollinated by a single insect species and in doing so developed such complicated contraptions of pollination it's hard to imagine anything more beautiful. One orchid even looks like a bee.






