Plants are awesome, with photosynthesis being the most disruptive invention ever! Join Professor Lindsay Turnbull from the University of Oxford to understand why Plants don't have faces, so we don't know what they're thinking, and can even (horror!) write them off as boring. In this video, we examine the evolutionary history of the land plants: from an ancestral alga to the diversity of modern flowering plants that cover our planet today. We will see how plants stole the technology for photosynthesis - undoubtedly the most disruptive invention of all time - and how their activities changed the biosphere forever. Finally, we explore the range of features that allow a large tree in full leaf to suck up a tonne of water every day.

Image Credit:

Many thanks to the Oxford Herbarium for providing the slides and microscope images of the Rhynie Cherts.

Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration Graph: NOAA Global Monitoring Lab, https://www.climate.gov/media/15554 (10/11/23)

Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

00:22 Titles

00:29 The Tragedy of Plants

01:13 What Makes a Plant a Plant

03:01 The Greatest Heist of All Time - Photosynthesis

04:13 The Rhynie Cherts - Early Land Plants

06:37 How Plants Regulate Our Climate

07:24 How We Have Broken Our Climate

08:45 Colour and Beauty - The Flowering Plants

09:59 Outro