The Green Planet
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.
- 2022-2022
- 1 season
- BBC Studios
- Documentary, Family
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.
Season 1 Episode Guide
5 Episodes 2022
Episode 1
Tropical Worlds
Wed, Jul 6, 2022 58 mins
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.
Episode 2
Water Worlds
Wed, Jul 13, 2022 57 mins
The least studied plants are those that live in water. In the swift currents of the Cano Cristales River in Colombia (seen in the movie Encanto), red macarenia cling to rocks with their stems. Unsinkable water lettuce and water hyacinth don't cling, they travel, and they compete fiercely for sunlight. Giant waterlilies shove, puncture and smother their rivals to monopolize the surface of a pond. In Japan, clumps of alga called marimos dance to shake off silt that can block the sunlight they need. In the Amazon's Rio Claro, certain plants produce so much oxygen that the water bubbles like sparkling wine. In pools formed by bromeliads on Venezuela's plateaus, bladderwort feast on tiny water creatures. Sundews and Venus flytraps are carnivorous as well, and flytraps save energy by counting the seconds as they pass.To get pollinated, a water variety of buttercup in England lives part-time above the surface. A single bulrush can produce hundreds of thousands of seeds, each borne on the wind by a tiny parachute. Along a riverbank in Brazil, trees produce fruit so colorful that fish can see them and leap from the water to swallow them, which helps the trees by depositing their seeds upstream when they migrate. Millennia ago, a plant adapted to life in the ocean to become seagrass, which provides forage for animals and can help us fight climate change.
Episode 3
Seasonal Worlds
Wed, Jul 20, 2022 58 mins
Between the tropics and the frozen poles lies a region dominated by relentless change in the form of the four seasons: spring, summer, autumn and winter. Each one presents plants with huge challenges, from ice and snow to raging fires; from intense competition to surprising enemies. This is a world of astonishing variety and vibrant colour. To survive here plants must use strategy, deception and remarkable feats of engineering. Most importantly, they must get their timing right.
Episode 4
Desert Worlds
Wed, Jul 27, 2022 58 mins
Desert plants spend decades in suspended animation waiting for rain, or they travel to find it. They survive using weapons, camouflage and surprising alliances with animals.
Episode 5
Human Worlds
Wed, Aug 3, 2022 58 mins
Two out of five wild plants are threatened with extinction. Today people are finding remarkable ways to help them, and so make our world a little greener and a little wilder.
