David Attenborough has returned to check on a plant he first saw in 1982 as a sprightly 54 year old - and both seem not to have changed a whole lot.
The broadcaster, now 95, marvelled at how the desert-based creosote bush has grown just a quarter of an inch in 40 years.
His team for The Green Planet used Google Earth to find the exact bush in California’s Mojave desert.
Using a camera crane, they were able to film the same shot as first seen in the series Living Planet.
Finding it, Sir David said: "Let’s see how much it’s grown... after an awfully extensive measuring, only a quarter of an inch. Extraordinary."
Sir David added the slow growth is down to the bush hibernating between years of no rain.
He said: "The plant itself is one of the oldest of all advanced plants in the world."
Episode producer Paul Williams said the specimen was "truly a wonder of the natural world".
He explained: "In this episode David becomes a time traveller. He is the only person that can do that because he’s the only person that’s travelled to so many places over the years.
"When I saw the original sequence I thought it’d be great to return and see if anything had changed as I knew how slowly these plants grow.
"It took a long time to track down, because very few people had heard of this remarkable individual - it seemed to have been forgotten.
"As we transition from the old footage of David in 1982 to our shot of David in 2022, we see that in four decades the plant has barely changed.
"It is truly a wonder of the natural world and I am so excited that we can reintroduce it to the world."
* The Green Planet: Desert Worlds is on BBC1 at 7pm on Sunday.
