Instant Genius - How flowers played a key role of the evolution of life on Earth

Episode Date: April 12, 2026

For most of us, our experience of flowers is limited to sending a bouquet to our loved ones on special occasions or perhaps picking up some pretty plants from the garden centre to cheer up our homes. But if we take a wider, more nuanced view, it quickly becomes clear that flowers have played an essential role in the evolution of the vast and varied ecosystems of the planet we live on. The fact is, without them, the Earth would be a very different place indeed. In this episode, we’re joined by David George Haskell, adjunct professor of environmental sciences at Emory University and author, to talk about his latest book, How Flowers Made Our World – The Story of Nature’s Revolutionaries. He tells us how the emergence of flowering plants around 130 million years ago triggered a massive cascade in biodiversity that we’re still feeling the effects of today, how their genetic flexibility has allowed them to be so evolutionarily successful, and talks us through the huge influence they continue to have on human life and culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Every Monday and Friday you'll hear world-leading scientists and experts talking about the most fascinating ideas in science and technology today. I'm Jason Goodyear, commissioning editor at BBC Science Focus. For most of us, our experience of flowers is limited to sending a bouquet to our loved ones on special occasions, or perhaps picking up some pretty plants from the garden centre to cheer up our homes. But if we take a wider, more nuanced view, it quickly becomes clear that flowers have played an essential role in the evolution of the vast and varied ecosystems of the planet we live on,

The fact is, without them, the Earth would be a very different place indeed. In this episode, we're joined by David George Haskell, a junk professor of environmental sciences at Emory University and author, to talk about his latest book, How Flowers Made Our World, the story of nature's revolutionaries. He tells us how the emergence of flowering plants around 130 million years ago triggered a massive cascade in biodiversity that we're still feeling the effects of today, how their genetic flexion flexibility has allowed them to be so evolutionary successful and talks us through the huge influence they continue to have on human life and culture. So welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much

for joining us. Jason, it's such a pleasure to be with you, talk about the creative powers of flowers. Yeah, great to have you on. So as you mentioned there, we're talking about your latest book today, how flowers made our world, the story of nature's revolutionaries. So I think one word that really jumps out in the title for me is the word revolutionaries. So let's start there. What do you mean by that? Yeah, I mean, at first glance, it seems preposterous, right? We think of flowers as pretty, but, you know, they're ephemeral. They're just sort of ornaments. But I really mean it, there are only a few true biological revolutions, right? The oxygen revolution, when microbial life changed the atmospheric concentration and changed the planet forever,

when animals started to swim around in the oceans, that was another. the big revolution. And when flowering plants showed up on the planet, when they evolved, which was actually pretty late in the story of the evolution of life, they forever changed the planet and we still live on the floral planet where most ecosystems, like rainforests and prairies and mangroves and so on, I found it on flowering plants and most animals, including ourselves, really depend on the productivity and our interactions with flowering plants. The other thing that to me that rings true with the word revolution, it was quite swift. So the first fossil pollen from flowering plants is about 130 million years ago.

And then within 10 million years, they'd started basically taking over most of the ecosystems. And by 100 million years ago, the overstory of most of the planet was dominated, or at least a large component of it, was flowering plants. So here are these late arrivals. Boom, they explode on the stage. and nothing was ever again the same. I mean, I got nothing against ferns and mosses and other sorts of plants, but 90% of species of plant on the planet now are flowering plants.

And that's a story that I really wanted to tell and to celebrate because I think it's one we don't hear enough. So you mentioned that they sort of burst onto the scene about 100-odd million years ago. And it's not entirely clear how this sort of massive proliferation happened. But are there any sort of front-runner theories? Yeah, so Darwin called it an abominable mystery, and he said he had wretched conjectures

about why this would happen. You know, Darwin always had a way with words. And, of course, in his time, he knew nothing about modern genetics, and the knowledge of the fossil record was very, very poor. And so for him, the explosion seemed almost instantaneous, which in his incremental view of evolution really didn't fit in. We now know, of course, a lot more about genetics and about ecology and so forth.

But it's still a little bit, you know, there are still mysteries left, which is, you know, why science is exciting. But for the question of how and why, one of the things that flaring plants did was expand cooperation and interaction from the below-ground world, where plants had been working with fungi and microbes for hundreds of millions of years. They brought that to the above-ground world by speaking to the, in the language of beauty to animal senses. So changing their leaves into things that we now call petals, right, to produce advertising, boardings and using those same petals as aroma diffuses.

So to draw in beetles and flies, and then much later when bees and butterflies evolved in direct response to flowers, there were no bees or butterflies before flowers, to stitch these interspecies relationships that are based on sensory communication that allow, the flowers to then pollinate one another much more efficiently to specialize on living in particular habitats. So that's one of their inventions. But that wasn't the only thing. They also reinvented motherhood for plants. So every seed from a flowering plant is wrapped in a fruit. Some of those fruits are fleshy and attract birds. Some are dry and explosive and send the seeds out all over the place. Some are husk and nut-like. Regardless of the form, this is a form of maternal care for the seed,

previously the seeds were sent an on your own on their own bye-bye little baby seed good luck and and so flowering plants by wrapping their seeds inside a fruit which is a mature ovary in terms of the it's really a matured part of the flower itself gave their little babies a leg up and then inside the seed there was a second form of motherhood whereas instead of just forming a single embryo which is what you know that's where we came from spoon meat's egg and have an embryo, same thing in plants, sperm from a pollen grain meets the egg. There's a second fertilization event where a second little sperm comes and meets with ladies in waiting cells that were hanging around with the egg and they form a doomed sibling

whose only job is to get fattened up by food from the mother, mostly starch and oils and proteins. But then, when the embryo germinates, it devours that doomed sibling and gets a huge, huge leg up. It's as if every seed has a little hamper of food to start it off. And so it doesn't have to rely on photosynthesis. So beauty, motherhood, and then the third ingredient, I think, is the genetic flexibility and nimbleness of flowering plants. Not only do they change through regular sort of incremental natural selection, but they go through these, what I think of the genetic storms, where they double their entire genome. It's like a cross between a corporal. retreat in a rave experimenting with all sorts of different genetic variations.

And of course, most of those get thrown out, but then they come up with a few good ideas, like how to build a petal, or let's change our aroma and attract a different kind of pollinator, or reconfigure our plumbing system so that we can transport so much water through our bodies that we create rainforests. I mean, there were no rainforest before flaring plants. So this genetic flexibility partly comes from the development of plants when an embryo is growing has a much more tolerance for genetic shenanigans than, say, mammalian embryo where, you know, if we doubled all out our chromosomes and started experimenting, you know, the embryo would never get beyond the two-cell stage.

So other creatures go through these doublings, but in flowering plants, they'd been particularly important. way back at the origin of flowering plants, but then again repeatedly through time, particularly in times of calamity. So they've got this flexibility that turbo charges evolution. Yeah, so let's have a look. You mentioned there how flowering plants tend to be overlooked.

And yeah, people think, well, if you mention flowers, I think they're pretty, they smell great, etc. But another of the huge impact that they've had is on as a food source, you know, not just for other, you know, bees and other animals and insects and things, but for humans as well. Yeah, I mean, those fruits and those seeds that are full filled with, you know, the food hampers, feed entire ecosystems.

A lot of mammals, a lot of birds depend on those. And we're a prime example because if you look at our food today, 66% of all the calories that humans eat worldwide come from just three species of grasses. And grasses are flowering plants. They have inconspicuous flowers because they're pollinated by the wind. so we often don't think of them as flowers, but they are flowers nonetheless. So wheat, rice, and maize are the foundation of Homo sapiens diet today. And then the rest of the diet is from pasture grass that fed the sheep or the cows,

sugar cane, millet, oats, barley, all of these are grasses. So if we were named for our food, we'd be called the grass apes. Homo poesia. Poesia is the scientific name for the grasses. But this isn't much older story than just human agriculture, which is, of course, just a few thousand years old. Our pre-human ancestors came down from the trees, whether that was a good old idea or not in hindsight we could debate. But they were happy little apes living in tropical forests. And then it came down from the trees and became bipedal and invented big brains and all the rest because they moved into the grasslands and the savannas, an ecosystem entirely created by.

specialized kind of flowering plant, the grasses. And our diet then was also heavily grass-based or eating the animals like wildebeest and so on that had been eating the grasses. Yeah, so I mentioned there the aroma or the fragrance of flowering plants. And this has played like a huge role in this story as well, hasn't it? It's, you know, in the evolution of the plants themselves and of all the species that sort of rely on them. So, you know, what can we say about that? Yeah, of course, flowers don't speak to one. And it way that's exactly analogous to human language, although they do listen for the buzz of bees and response, so they're a lot more acoustically active than we've given them credit for in the past.

But the floral aroma is extremely complex, and in a way, they're like a chemical language. So think about a rose. We all know the aroma of a rose. It's got 400 different aromatic molecules within it. So very sophisticated and nuanced, speaking to particular kinds of insects, and roses, mostly bees, although most roses we encounter today have been so bred by humans that really we are the primary customer there. It's a human aesthetic that have shaped the modern rose, which is an interesting story in itself, a kind of symbiosis, if you like. So the aromatic language,

sometimes is very specific. So some orchids or figs produce aroma molecules that speak really just a one species of insect, very specialized relationship. Roses and magnolias, it's more, okay, I'm going to produce a whole diversity of aromas here that speak to lots of different insects, so I can make sure that at least some of them come to pollinate me. And the aroma is relatively cheap to make, and it can travel quite a long distance, you know, tens, sometimes hundreds of meters away. And insects are very clever because they're antennae, that have got two antennas, so it's almost like binocular vision for smell, they can follow those odour plumes upwind and find the flower. So out of billions of leaves and twigs in the forest, they can find this single flower.

Like if, say, particularly for orchids, it's almost unbelievable. There might just be one orchid growing in this enormous patch of forest, and the little moths at night find exactly that orchid and then find the next orchid to pollinate it. So aroma allows specificity and accuracy. It's like Cupid suddenly got accurate. Mythology, Cupid shoots arrows blindly, and that's the story of human love. But with flying plants, Cupid is generally very accurate. There are some wind-pollinated flowers that just toss their love to the wind,

and we all get hay fever and curse them. But the aromas is really about this nuanced language. But then, curiously, humans become eavesdroppers. So we're not bees. We're not pollinators. But we are so fascinated by floral aromas that we spend billions of pounds a year on the perfume industry and the scented candle industry and all the rest. And this, to me is actually quite beautiful. But to express ourselves, our individual or cultural identity, we become chimeric.

We merge ourselves with floral aromas. So to say me, I need to really say we. me combined with rose perfume feels more like me. So in a way, it's enacting what flowers have been doing all along, which is building unlikely relationships between the flower and other species. So perfumes, in a way, is a little floral perfumes, give us a glimpse into our human subconscious desire to be in relationship with our creators, our flowering plants. Starting or growing your own business can be intimidating and lonely at times,

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Visit focal powered by name.com for more information. Yeah, so you mentioned orchids there, and I think this is a really great example of another quality of flowering plants. And that's the sort of powers of imitation. So that plays, it also plays a really big, big role in this whole story. What can we say about that? Yeah, the orchids are tricksters, right? And I love them because they take the usual story of old pollination is all 100% cooperative, right, that the flowers get pollinated, then the bees get their nectar and pollen, which is fine.

There's a lot of that going on, and that is part of the original genius of flowers. But orchids are like, okay, let's slow down on the allegories here. We're going to add a little bit of darkness to the story. So some of them look like they've got nectar, like they've got a spur coming from the back of the flower, but there is no nectar in it and there never will be. Or they've got a little dusting of yellow at the center of the flower. You can see this even in the orchids, like the moth orchids in the supermarket. A lot of them that got yellow in the middle. That's a fake signal that I've got pollen that you can eat, but really there's no pollen there. The pollen is a tiny little packet that gets put on the back of the insect and they never get to eat it. Other orchids,

take the deception up a level and become sexual deceivers. So they smell and look and feel just like a female wasp, for example, of not just any female wasp, but of a very particular species. And different orchid species mimic different wasp. And so the amorous males emerge in the spring, oh, my goodness, like, oh, lots of females, and they're in love with me. And so the males try and embrace the, literally embrace the flower. And of course, the male wasps are wasting their time, and they just get a little packet of orchid pollen stuck on the back of their heads.

And then they go on and transfer that pollen around. And so here the orchid is meeting its own needs for pollination by deceiving an insect. And these wasps only last, you know, they live for a few days, a few weeks. So this wasted time actually is a real cost to them. It's not just a little sort of amusing side thing that goes on. There's real harm there. some other plants like some of the Aram plants that grow in the woods, say, in North America, they actually kill their pollinators when the little flies fly into the female flower

and deliver the pollen. They can't escape and they just die in the flower. So orchids are the champion deceivers, but they're not the only ones. So another thing that really struck out to me as I was going through the book was this idea of underwater meadows. So that's something I'd never thought about before. So like you say, if we think about flowers or flowering plants, we just, we think of everything above the ground, like in the forests, in the jungle, etc. But, you know, there's a whole other sort of world going on out there, isn't there? There is. And, you know, so my undergraduate degree is sort of in biology and then I got a PhD. And it's like, I never heard about all of this, partly because back then people didn't know as much about the biology.

But flowering plants didn't just change the land. They transformed the ocean. partly by changing the ocean margins through mangroves and salt marsh meadows. Those are really important. But then even more amazing are the seagrass meadows. These are flaring plants that for tens of millions of years have lived under the water, and they actually flower underwater. And their pollen grains are special shape so that they catch the ocean currents and can spin around and hit the female flowers as they're emerging from the male parts of the flowers.

forming these quite extensive meadows, sometimes stretching over tens or hundreds of square miles. We have them in the northern hemisphere around the UK, around Japan and North America, but also they're very important in the tropics. And these seagrass meadows are nurseries for lots of shellfish and fish. So even ocean-going fish come to the seagrass meadow to breed because it's protected and a safer place for their babies to grow. And then also the seagrass meadows are amazing at trapping carbon. They store 50 times more carbon per area than the luscious forest.

And that's not to diminish the importance of forests and climate change. But seagrass meadows are really extraordinarily important. And yet they live in obscurity until fairly recently. And one of the research projects that I undertook for the book was to follow over several years and participate as a volunteer in the Firth of Fourth near Edinburgh in Scotland, working to restore seagrass meadows, which used to be very extensive in that area, but of decline because of pollution,

and this isn't a story unique to the Firth of Fourth all over the northern hemisphere. The 20th century saw massive declines in seagrass meadows. And they're replanting them and experimenting with ways of bringing back those populations. And, you know, what I learned there, I mean, not just about seagrass, was how important involving the human community is. So by involving volunteers and collecting the seeds, planting the seeds, mapping out where the seagrass is, you bring awareness of these amazing plants back into the human community where it needs to be,

if we're going to be good kin and neighbors and have good policies. It's not enough just to talk about it. We need to involve our bodies, get our fingers, and our well. into the mud. And to me, it was very inspiring to see that Restoration Fourth, which is a group of a whole series of local and national partners all working together to transform not just local ecology, but human culture to bring the awareness of the below water world back into human consciousness. That was extraordinary. Yeah, so sort of sticking with conservation there, so we all know that there's dozens and dozens of species of plants and animals.

are going extinct every day, sadly. But what's the picture with the sort of global health of flowering plants at the moment? Yeah, it's very mixed. And actually, we don't know, because most flowering plant species are really not well studied compared to, say, birds that attract lots of attention and there are global bird data.

I mean, when I see birds in my back garden, I'm logging them into my phone and all that on eBay. You know, with flowering plants, we're not there. So there's a great deal unknown, but the groups that we do know, So, for example, the magnolias and the orchids, the best estimates are that, you know, 50% of them are threatened. So, you know, that's not good. And, you know, it's in line with what we know from mammals and birds and amphibians as well.

On the other hand, there are also flowering plants that are, because of this genetic nimbleness, are adapting very rapidly. So, for example, in old mine sites in Wales and in England, these are sites that have basically been moonscapes for a century more because there's so much just. zinc and other heavy metals there, Seacampian and other flowers have recolonized them by evolving ways of detoxifying or otherwise protecting themselves from the heavy metals. Or when we create new habitats like wheat fields or spray herbicides on things, there are a small number, and this is the important point, it's not all flowering plants that are managing to adapt. A small number of these offered rapidly breeding annual plants have managed to adapt. So, you know, regardless of what happens to homo sapiens, and I hope we make it through and all

evolve into something clever. And, you know, if we do that, it will be because we're working with flowering plants, as our ancestors did. But, you know, flowers will be around long after we're gone or have evolved into something else, but we do live in an age of great diminishment. And the key for a better future is genetic diversity. So if you can protect wild habitats, which are storehouses of genetic diversity, you're essentially giving evolution a leg up.

Or in agriculture, if we can protect genetic diversity, save those ancient strains of wheat and apple and all the other. So instead of just relying on one or two genotypes, actually lean into the genetic diversity and allow the plants to figure out how they're going to change to climate change. And there are innovative plant breeders around the world who are doing this. Some of it using modern genetics. And some of it is going back to old ways of growing, which people have used for thousands of years, for example, using mixes of crops instead of monocultures for cereal crops, for example.

It's called Maslin agriculture that includes genetic diversity in the field and therefore is more resilient to the slings and arrows of climate change-induced fortune. Yeah, it's not a point at which we should lose hope, you know, that there are still solutions out there. Oh, absolutely. I know, I mean, losing hope is just taking the easy way out, right? I mean, sometimes I feel extremely beaten down and depressed and hopeless. I'm not diminishing the grief and the psychological burden of that. But, you know, what I do is to go outside. Our driveway is all cracked up with horrible concrete.

You know, it's nearly a century held. And I get down with my little magnifying glass and I look at the weeds that are coming up through the cracks in the concrete, which seems like a little bit of a silly practice. but actually it connects me, A, to the beauty of the tiny little flowers on bittercress and the little violets and things that are coming in. You know, it's a boost of beauty, which, you know, we goodness knows, we all need a bit more floral beauty in our lives right now. But also, it's giving me an embodied experience of the resilience and the insuppressability,

if you like, of flowering plants. Even in this most hostile of environments, the green world, given half a true, chance is resurging. And then I can go back and figure, okay, what do I mean to be doing as a writer, as a citizen in terms of activism and protests and calling politicians and all of that. So embodied connection to the living world for me has been really important in terms of my mental health, but also in terms of giving me a compass to know what is right action in this time of ecological change and crisis. Yeah, so having said that, there are many benefits. It's been pretty well studied now.

the mental health benefits of getting outside in the greenery and things. And also from having plants and flowers in our homes. So it's kind of a bit of a selfish question. I really like having plants and flowers around. But I've had orchids, lilies, etc. And I've never been able to keep them alive for very long. The only success I've had is with Monsteras and Lucky Bamboo and things like that. So just for anyone listening, is there a sort of beginner plant flowering plant that we can have in our home that, you know,

We can enjoy all the benefits of, you know, looking at it, it's fragrance, etc. But, you know, it's not too difficult to keep alive. Yeah, I mean, I'd say the first practice is actually forgiving yourself and knowing that it's okay to have, say, an orchid that lasts for a while and then it dies because actually that's what happens out in the wild, right? Most plants don't make it more than, I mean, most seeds don't make it at all. And most flowering plants, only a few of them live 200 years and become the venerable old oak. So bringing some flowers in and enjoying them for a few months.

And then if they die, okay, that sort of sab. It's all right to keep going with that, particularly in places where, you know, the challenge in higher latitudes is getting them enough light. So getting some little LED grow lights can be helpful, reading up about their needs. But also just giving yourself some slack. It's like there's enough to beat ourselves up in the world. So, yeah, I mean, you mentioned some of them, Monsterra is one, you know, Some of the indoor fig plants, ficus, can be quite resilient.

I have some on the north side of our house here that do reasonably well. And finding other plant people, you know, we think about it's us and the plants. No, the key to the success for growing plants is to find your community, the other green people who live, say, in a similar kind of apartment or house that you do. What's working for them? and I love how, whether it's indoor gardening or gardening in allotments or in a garden, draws people together to share stories about, oh, this variety of cabbage works really well in this particular soil, or all my cabbage got eaten by the caterpillars.

I'm feeling horrible about it. And we can sympathize with one another, and that's part of what I'm sure our ancestors have been doing for tens of thousands of years. So I would, A, forgive yourself, B, find other people. and then try some of the ones, particularly that like low light, and don't over water. So that's the key thing that kills most flower plants, indoor flowering plants, is feeling like, okay, I'm just going to keep watering this. If the soil is really waterlogged and just the roots are going to rot and it's just not going to go well. So, yeah, so, I mean, that's my, I mean, I actually, I'm lucky that I've got one sunny window sale.

So I look for the orchids at the supermarket that are for sale. because they're half dead. And then I'll put them there and try and bring them back to life. And some of them make it and some of them don't. Some of them have been kind of for a few years. But that's because I've got this sunny window sill that I can make that happen. I realize a lot of people don't have that.

So finding plants that do better in deep shade. And, of course, there's great online resources. And RHS has a plethora of advice about plants for different conditions, which is a real gift. back to the community. Thank you for listening to this episode of Instant Genius, brought to you from the team behind BBC Science Focus. That was David George Haskell.

To discover more about the topics we've just discussed, check out his book, How Flowers Made Our World, the Story of Nature's Revolutionaries. If you liked what you just heard, then please do consider subscribing to Instant Genius on your preferred podcast platform. If you'd like to see our guests and hosts in person, then why not check out our YouTube channel at ScienceFocus. The current issue of BBC Science Focus magazine is out now. Pick up a copy wherever you buy your favourite magazines or download us on your app store of choice.

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