Plants: From Roots to Riches

By BBC Radio 4 Extra

What's Plants: From Roots to Riches about?

Kathy Willis considers our changing relationship with plants over the last 250 years - from tools to exploit, to objects of beauty, to being an essential resource we must conserve.

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Plants: From Roots to Riches episodes:

11.18.2014
Episode 5
Professor Kathy Willis, director of science at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, with the final episodes of her new history of our changing relationship with plants Kathy Willis examines how the technology that helped map whole genomes in plants and...
11.18.2014
Episode 4
Prof Kathy Willis, Director of Science at Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, with an omnibus edition of her history of our changing relationship with plants from the early 20th century. She examines new insights into plant hormones during the first few...
11.18.2014
Episode 3
Prof Kathy Willis, Director of Science at the Royal Botanic Garden, Kew, with the omnibus edition of her history of our changing relationship with plants during the early 20th century. Kathy Willis examines how the complete picture of photosynthesis led...
11.18.2014
Episode 2
Prof Kathy Willis, Director of Science at the Royal Botanic Garden, Kew, with the omnibus edition of her history of our changing relationship with plants during the 19th century. She examines the race to tame and culture the prized Amazonian...
11.18.2014
Episode 1
The first of five omnibus editions of Prof Kathy Willis' timely new history of our changing relationship with plants From the birth of modern plant classification, harnessing botany and imperial progress in furthering Britain's destiny as the major civilising power...
08.22.2014
The Great Providers
Prof Kathy Willis concludes her major new history series by asking how much plant biodiversity is worth, and examines new research into securing the future of our staple crops. Understanding the distribution, diversity and potential of plants for food, lay...
08.21.2014
Green and Pleasant Lands
Prof. Kathy Willis examines the different kinds of spiritual, physical and intellectual links that we have with the landscape and their diverse ecosystems and the extent to which they contribute to our health and well being. As well as providing...
08.20.2014
Capture and Drawdown
In 2005 a landmark study was published which changed the political landscape for conservation, probably for ever. Rather than viewing biodiversity as something to be conserved for conservation's sake, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment started to assess the contributions that biodiversity...
08.19.2014
Dynamic Rainforest
Palms provide many basic necessities and are collectively one of the most important plants families after grasses and legumes. In 2007 and extraordinary new find came to light when a French plantation manager in Madagascar, came across a new species...
08.18.2014
A Blooming Tree of Life
The new science of DNA sequencing during the 1990's would not only lead to the mapping of complete human and plant genomes but it was to also revolutionise the classification for flowering plants. For the first time, rather than the...
08.15.2014
A Useful Weed
At a glance, Arabidopsis thaliana (Mouse ear cress) looks little more than a tiny flowering weed. But this nondescript plant became a Rosetta stone for understanding the molecular processes underpinning many plant traits when in 2000 it became the first...
08.14.2014
Capsules of Life
By the end of the 20th century, concerns raised in the 1992 Rio Earth Summit about the fate of wild plants and their ecosystems meant that conservation in the field now needed to be complemented by methods away from a...
08.13.2014
An Ill Wind
During the early hours of October 16th 1987, hurricane force winds ripped through southern England recording gusts of 110 mph. In just a few hours 15 million trees across the country were felled. Dawn revealed over 700 of Kew's trees...
08.12.2014
Unlocking Biodiversity
In 1947 an ambitious project began to survey and catalogue the biodiversity of plants in East Africa. It was to take 60 years and turned out to be one of the largest regional "floras" ever assembled, involving 135 botanists from...
08.11.2014
Signals of Growth
When in 1934 botanist Kenneth Thimann isolated the plant hormone auxin, he put an end to one of the great botanical mysteries - how plants move and respond to their surroundings. For decades plant scientists had been mystified as to...
08.08.2014
Botanical Medicine
In 1947 Sir Robert Robinson received the Nobel prize for Chemistry "in recognition of his investigations of plant products of biological importance, especially the alkaloids". This powerful family of plant chemicals was proving a potent medical tool. Professor Kathy Willis...
08.07.2014
Hunt for Diversity
Agriculture tends to favour the best food varieties but this is often a trade off with beneficial traits such as resistance to disease or tolerance to drought. During the 1920s the Russian botanist Nikolai Vavilov, having witnessed famine on a...
08.06.2014
Battling Bark and Beetle
By the end of the First World War the mysterious sudden death of elms was a common sight across Belgium and the Netherlands. Dutch researchers managed to elucidate the real culprit amidst rumours of drought or wartime gas poisoning. It...
08.05.2014
Multiple Genes
In 1903 a cluster of evening primrose in an abandoned potato field outside the Dutch town of Hilversum caught the eye of German botanist Hugo de Vries. Its huge blooms and large leaves appeared to suggest the sudden development of...
08.04.2014
Towards the Light
The Nobel prize for Chemistry was awarded to German scientist Richard Willstatter in 1915 for his analysis of the green plant pigment chlorophyll. It marked a significant moment in the long history of piecing together the many elements that contribute...
08.01.2014
Patterns from Crossed Peas
In 1900 three papers by three botanists, unknown to each other, appeared in the same scientific journal. Each had independently "rediscovered" the rules of inheritance that Gregor Mendel had found four decades earlier in his solitary investigations of pea plants....
07.31.2014
Plant Invaders
The Victorians' pride at the effortless movement of plants around the world during the late 19th century was having an unwelcome side effect. Invasive species were beginning to wipe out native populations of plants. With no natural predators to control...
07.30.2014
Orchidmania
Orchids are big business. Today over £5m of orchid hybrids are imported as cut flowers into the UK each year. For the Victorians orchids were the chosen ornaments of royalty and captured the 19th century fascination with scientific oddity and...
07.29.2014
Tapping into Rubber
Natural rubber derived from latex had long been a curiosity. When Nelson Goodyear perfected his method of vulcanisation of rubber and showcased its applications at the Great Exhibition of 1851 the possibilities now seemed endless. But by 1860 demand was...
07.28.2014
Taming the Exotic
To the Victorians the Amazonian water lily was more than just a plant. The adventure of finding this exotic piece of the Empire and getting it to grow on home soil involved horticultural ambition, scientific vision and fierce competition amongst...
07.25.2014
Lumping and Splitting
By 1850 identifying and classifying plants had become far more important than mere list making. Establishing the global laws of botany - what grew where and why - occupied the well travelled naturalist Joseph Hooker - son of Kew's director...
07.24.2014
Blight on the Landscape
Out of the tragedy of the Irish potato famine was to emerge a major new discipline in science - plant pathology. Infectious micro-organisms would come to be accepted as a cause of disease rather than its result. Kathy Willis hears...
07.23.2014
Pressed Plants and Possibilities
The Victorians realised that preserving the structural features of a plant was essential to classifying it, placing it on a plant family tree and building up an overall understanding of the relationships between plants. Central to this was the herbarium...
07.22.2014
Plants to Shape Society
The 18th-century botanical impresario Sir Joseph Banks was convinced that Britain's destiny was as the major civilising power in the world, and this could be achieved by harnessing botany and imperial progress to each other's mutual benefit. Professor Kathy Willis...
07.21.2014
A Rose by Any Other Name
The 18th-century's age of travel and enlightenment meant that a vast influx of newly discovered plants into Europe was creating a botanical tower of Babel. No common language for plants and a wealth of long and localised names made communication...

What's Plants: From Roots to Riches about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Plants: From Roots to Riches episodes:

Episode 5

Episode 4

Episode 3

Episode 2

Episode 1

The Great Providers

Green and Pleasant Lands

Capture and Drawdown

Dynamic Rainforest

A Blooming Tree of Life

A Useful Weed

Capsules of Life

An Ill Wind

Unlocking Biodiversity

Signals of Growth

Botanical Medicine

Hunt for Diversity

Battling Bark and Beetle

Multiple Genes

Towards the Light

Patterns from Crossed Peas

Plant Invaders

Orchidmania

Tapping into Rubber

Taming the Exotic

Lumping and Splitting

Blight on the Landscape

Pressed Plants and Possibilities

Plants to Shape Society

A Rose by Any Other Name