Plants: From Roots to Riches Folgen

In 1900 three papers by three botanists, unknown to each other, appeared in the same scientific journal. Each had independently "rediscovered" the rules of inheritance that Gregor Mendel had found four decades earlier in his solitary investigations of pea plants.Kathy Willis reassesses Mendel's famous pea experiments in the light of his attempts to uncover what happens over several generations when hybrid plants are created. As historian Jim Endersby explains, Mendel's initial results may have stunned him and shown what plant breeders might have suspected for decades, but science now had mathematical laws to create new varieties.Historian Greg Radick sheds light on how Mendelism, in the years leading up to the First World War, became heavily promoted by Cambridge botanist William Bateson and was put into action by the first Professor of Agricultural Botany, Roland Biffen. His success in creating new wheat hybrids is explained by a unique international assembly of wheat ears from the early 1900s, curated by Mark Nesbitt, Head of Kew's economic botany collection.Producer Adrian Washbourne.

The Victorians' pride at the effortless movement of plants around the world during the late 19th century was having an unwelcome side effect. Invasive species were beginning to wipe out native populations of plants. With no natural predators to control them, one man's flower was turning into another man's weed.Prof Kathy Willis hears how during the late 1800s, many invasive species from Japanese knot weed to Himalayan balsam to water hyacinth came from deliberate introductions and asks if today, trying to control them is ultimately futile?As historian Jim Endersby explains both Charles Darwin and Kew's director Joseph Hooker were the first to examine the impact of invasives, having noticed on the island of St Helena and Ascension Island the effect on native plants.One of the current biggest invaders is lantana, familiar to British gardeners as a small pot plant. As Shonil Baghwat of the Open University reveals, since its introduction to Kolkata Botanical garden in the 1870s it decimated native teak plantations. But today opportunities exist to exploit its presence for the wood, basketry and paper industries.And Kathy Willis hears from Kew conservationist Colin Clubbe on the extent to which we should view invasive plants in our ecosystems as part of a strategy to maintain resilience to environmental change in the future.Producer Adrian Washbourne.

Orchids are big business. Today over £5m of orchid hybrids are imported as cut flowers into the UK each year. For the Victorians orchids were the chosen ornaments of royalty and captured the 19th century fascination with scientific oddity and imperial conquest.Prof Kathy Willis explores how orchids, one of the planet's most diverse family of plants, mesmerised Victorian devotees and became not only trophy plants of the rich but also a scientific tool to promote a new theory of evolution. The study of orchids also paved the way for cultivation of exotics for all.Lara Jewitt tours the orchid glasshouses at Kew where over 3000 species are cultivated, and explains the biology unique to orchids that fuels interest for both scientists and plant lovers.Darwin was fascinated with these rare and precious plants. Their unique pollination mechanisms helped back up his new evolutionary theory based upon natural selection. As historian Jim Endersby reveals, the delicate orchid was to play a part in getting botany a seat at the top table of scientific respectability.Even in the 1850s, Kew's director Joseph Hooker had expressed concern about the damage orchid hunters were inflicting on the wild population. Whilst today many species remain endangered, V Sarasan, head of Kew's Conservation Biotechnology Unit, reveals how new conservation efforts in some of the most orchid species-rich areas of Madagascar are helping to successfully reintroduce endangered members of this vast but vulnerable flowering family back into the wild.Producer Adrian Washbourne.