“Plants, whether they are enormous, or microscopic, are the basis of all life including ourselves.” This was David Attenborough’s introduction to The Green Planet, the latest BBC natural history series.
Over the last 500 million years, plants have become interwoven into every aspect of our lives. Plants support all other life on Earth today. They provide the oxygen people breathe, as well as cleaning the air and cooling the Earth’s temperature. But without water, plants would not survive. Originally found in aquatic environments, there are estimated to be around 500,000 land plant species that emerged from a single ancestor that floated through the water.
