PRIVATE LIFE OF PLANTS
Without plants, there would be no food, no animals of any sort, no life on earth at all. Yet for most of the time their lives remain a secret to us, hidden, private events.
The reason is merely a difference of time. Plants live on a different time-scale from ours. Though not obviously to the naked eye, they are constantly on the move: developing, fighting, avoiding or exploiting predators or neighbours, struggling to find food, to increase their territo- ries, to reproduce themselves, to find and hold a place in the sun. We only need to learn to look.
In this book, and his BBC television series, David Attenborough does look. He examines in turn the great trials of plant life the world over:
1 Travelling
2 Growing
3 Flowering
4 The Social Struggle
5 Living Together
6 Surviving
David Attenborough shows us the natural world and how it works, with a clarity and infectious enthusiasm that few other writers or film-makers have matched. One of the most successful teachers of the late 20th century, his books and films are consistently of the highest quality. The Private Life of Plants is central to his work, the background to all that he has studied so far.
Given this fascinating new view of vegetable life, anything that grows on soil or rock or water, in open country or the smallest garden, suddenly seems quite different: less gentle altogether, in restless motion night and day, locked in the end- less competition necessary for survival.
"This is David Attenborough at his best... Full of delights and surprises, even for those who thought they knew about the seemingly passive green world around us."
PROFESSOR GRENVILLE LUCAS
Keeper of the Herbarium and Library Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
