Kingdom of Plants (2012)

In this sensational series, shot over the course of a year, Sir David Attenborough explores the lives of plants and their fascinating world, from the most bizarre to the most beautiful. This spectacular adventure through the Kingdom of Plants is so immersive and compelling it has the capacity to amaze even the least greenfingered.

Episode 1: Life in the Wet Zone
Inside the magnificent Palm House, a unique global rainforest in London, David 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.

Episode 2: Solving the Mystery
David uses the latest 3D technology to explore a world beyond the confines of our human senses. He begins with the secret world of plant movement and uses sinister carnivorous plants to show just how active plants can be.

As autumn envelopes the Gardens, fungi reveal themselves not as the enemies of plants but their vital allies. In Kew’s atmospheric Fungarium, David discovers a specimen that has the power of mind control and another that lives underground where it has grown to be so big it can be counted as the largest single organism on the planet. It is 6 times bigger than Kew Gardens itself.

David concludes the film in the Princess of Wales Conservatory, where he meets an old friend, the great Titan arum. At 8ft tall, it is the largest flower in the world and a plant he remembers from a previous filming trip to Sumatra.

Episode 3: Survival
David discovers the plants that have evolved to shed their dependency on water enabling them to survive in the driest environments.

Cracking the code to plants’ survival strategies is the key to protecting their future and Kew have built a high tech long-term solution fifty miles south of the Gardens. Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank has the capacity to store seeds from the vast majority of remaining species of plant on the planet, thus saving plants from extinction in the future.

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, the largest family of flowering plants.