Attenborough, David, 1995.

Reviewed by Alwynne B. Beaudoin, Archaeological Survey,
Provincial Museum of Alberta in AASP Newsletter 31(1):10-11, 1998.

Good science writing for the public is extremely difficult. And scientists who are good writers are a rare breed. In Sir David Attenborough we find a longtime and skilled practitioner of this art. I can remember reading Zoo Quest to Madagascar (published in 1961) when I was very young and watching in fascination an old black-and-white TV as Attenborough, dressed in safari gear, sat in the midst of a desert somewhere, piecing together fragments of shell to make an enormous egg and speculating that this extinct bird was the giant Roc of Arabian Nights legends. With time and new technology, Attenborough's communication skills have become more refined, yet he has never lost the ability to convey enthusiasm and fascination for natural history.

Attenborough is best known for his programs on zoology. But in this latest endeavour, he turns his attention to the world of plants. The Private Life of Plants continues a long tradition of books produced to accompany his TV series. Splendidly illustrated with dozens of colour photographs, this book is subdivided into six chapters ("Travelling", "Feeding and Growing", "Flowering", "The Social Structure", "Living Together", and "Surviving"), mirroring the structure of the TV series for which it is a companion volume.

Each chapter concentrates on a particular activity of plants. "Travelling" examines seeds and seed dispersal, the stage of most plants' life cycle when they can travel most easily. It surveys some of the ingenious ways in which plants enlist the witting or unwitting aid of animals and birds for transportation, by producing attractive fruits for example. "Feeding and Growing" highlights methods plants use to try to protect themselves from creatures that would feed on them, including a formidable array of camouflage, mechanical and chemical defences against predators. Attenborough points out that this warfare takes place in a co-evolutionary fashion. As plants develop new defences, animals develop new ways of getting around them. Ultimately, all animal life is dependent, even at second or third hand, on plant food. Graphic images and descriptions show how some plants (pitcher plants, sundews, Venus' flytrap) have turned trapper and carnivore, deriving part of their nutrition from insects.

For palynologists like myself, the most interesting chapter covers pollination ("Flowering"). Although wind pollination is mentioned, most attention is paid to the complex interactions between plants and their animal, bird, or insect pollinators. This provides a very different perspective to the one I am used to from pollen records, where the majority of pollen types are from wind-pollinated plants. Attenborough describes how flower structure, including shape, colour, and scent, can be modified in a myriad of ways to accommodate different pollinators and how plants entice their preferred pollinators by offering nectar for instance. In some cases, the plant may be completely dependent on one species of insect for pollination. This must be an important consideration for those concerned with biodiversity and ecological integrity.

The "Social Struggle" begins with the great storm or hurricane that devastated much of England in October 1987. Attenborough shows that an event seen as a disaster for trees and forests was an opportunity for many other types of plants, especially those that thrive in forest clearings or gaps. Interestingly, research I have read elsewhere suggests that such "super storms" have probably been a regular feature in some northern forests. Storm events, with a recurrence interval of several centuries, have been identified in the forests of the eastern US. Clearly, such rare, on a human scale, events play an important role in an ecosystem where the dominant life forms may have lifetimes that are measured in centuries. Competition for light, water, nutrients, and growing space forms the basis of the social struggle for plants. Attenborough also explores the role of fire, not so much as a destructive agent, but as a positive influence in forest maintenance and regeneration.

"Living Together" focuses more explicitly on plant-animal and plant-insect interactions. Attenborough shows that these relationships often have benefits for both partners; plants get protection and sometimes nutrition, and insects get a home and a secure food supply. Attenborough turns his attention to less obvious relationships such as the partnership between mycorrhizal fungi and plants. The apogee of such symbiosis is lichen, an intimate association between fungi and algae. Attenborough surveys some of the multitudinous forms of lichen and emphasizes their importance as pioneering organisms in harsh environments. More sinister are plant parasites, deriving nutrition from other plants. The most spectacular of these is rafflesia and Attenborough includes a remarkable series of photographs showing one flowering, producing the biggest flower of any plant.

Extremes are the keynotes for "Surviving" extremes of cold, of heat, of drought, or of moisture. Suitably, the chapter begins with a visit to the extreme ends of the earth, Antarctica and the Canadian Arctic, where Attenborough finds some plants that can survive even under the most severe conditions. At the equator on Mount Kenya, plants have to survive diurnal swings between extreme cold and heat. As a result, the mountain has developed its own unique flora. Similarly, on the tepuis of South America, drenched by torrential rainfalls, an astonishing range of endemics has developed, including many carnivorous plants. Attenborough estimates that the tepuis have 900 species of orchids, most of which are endemic. Then Attenborough explores the boundary between land and sea, where the mangroves reign, coping with salinity and instability.

To children especially, plants often seem boring because they don't appear to do anything. The time scale over which a plant grows and develops is quite different to that which controls human metabolism and activities. Plant activities are generally imperceptible. Many of the episodes in The Private Life of Plants featured time-lapse sequences of plants, often accompanied by wonderful sound effects, making growth and development seem to happen almost at our pace. This is lost in the book, yet many of the colour photographs do have an immediacy and dynamism, as though motion has just been suspended. There are several still sequences, such as ones of a tent-making caterpillar colony, or the development of a pitcher plant's trap, which vividly convey a sense of activity.

A disproportionate amount of space is devoted to those over-achievers of the plant kingdom, the orchids. And most chapters concentrate on the bizarre and strange. Thus readers will learn much about the flowering and pollination of the giant titan arum of Sumatra which, as Attenborough notes, is virtually unknown to science, and very little about the behaviour of the ubiquitous dandelion. Much attention is paid to plant-animal and plant-insect interactions, as though throughout Attenborough had a secret yearning for his own field of zoology. The geographic scope is impressive, from poppies in Canada's Arctic to lichens in Antarctica, from succulents in the deserts of Namibia to giant sitka spruce in Canada's west coast rainforest. Keeping track of these journeys would have been helped by a map of the major world vegetation types or ecoregions and the location of some of the places visited. This is a book that gives a big picture.

This book is not written from a botanist's or taxonomist's viewpoint, but very much from the perspective of the natural historian. Latin binomials are confined to the index; plants are called by common names in the text. Botanic purists may "Harrumph!" in annoyance, but it probably makes the book accessible to a wider readership. As such, it is a book that can be enjoyed by anyone interested in natural history. Adults will enjoy the text; children will be fascinated by the colour pictures. Despite its eceptively simple style, it is packed with information. From my own position, it would make great supplemental reading for an introductory course in palynology. Especially so since many students come to palynology from varied backgrounds (geology, anthropology, geography), and sometimes have only the vaguest grasp of botany and the role of pollen in plant life-cycles. Often, getting students to understand that pollen grains aren't seeds can be a herculean endeavour!

The appeal of this book undoubtedly lies in its very personal view of the world of plants. Attenborough often takes a quirky and unexpected look at aspects of the plant kingdom. He thinks that plants have often used us as much for their ends as we have them for ours. I especially enjoyed the "wheat's-eye-view" of its domestication - enlisting humans to enable it to defeat rival plants and spread over huge areas of the globe! Although Attenborough states that scientific sources would be out-of-place in this book, it would have been useful to have a list of further reading for anyone whose interest had been caught by a specific topic.

But these are minor quibbles. This is a book to be enjoyed. Like many others of my generation I suspect, I can attribute at least part of my own fascination for the natural world to some of Attenborough's early broadcasts. This present book, and its TV series, will serve to introduce a whole new generation to the wonder of plants. By making plants seem as charismatic as animals, Attenborough has done a great service to the science of botany.

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Notes: This article is reproduced here with permission of the AASP Newsletter editor, Jan Willem Weegink. A slightly different version appeared in The Canadian Field-Naturalist 112(3):569-570, 1998.