The Private Life of Plants

Plants employ some ingenious techniques to travel from place to place, to find new homes. They rely on their seeds to transport them far and wide, often taking to the air. They invented advanced aeronautical technology long before humans did. Other plants conscript animals to carry them on long journeys, while with the help of time-lapse photography even the humble bramble is transformed as it moves through the woodland.

For every seedling that sprouts, growing is a race for the light. Remarkable time-lapse photography reveals how new leaves fight for a place in the sun and infant vines scramble to be the first into the forest canopy. Leaves are the ingenious factories where plants make all their food, but they're also under constant attack from animals large and small. So with spines, stings, poisons and dramatic disappearing tricks, plants work to defend themselves.

Flowers are the most eye-catching feature of plants, but they are not for our benefit, they're for sex. Flashy colours and intoxicating perfumes lure a host of animal couriers to collect rewards such as nectar, but when it comes to attracting pollinators some flowers can be very deceitful, offering fraudulent promises of food, places to lay eggs, or sometimes even false sex.

Plants often rely on animals, fungi and each other for food, protection or a home. Deep in the forests of Borneo the mysterious Rafflesia lives entirely within the body of another plant and only emerges into the outside world to bloom, producing the largest single flower on earth. While many marine plants spend their entire lives cosseted into the bodies of jellyfish, coral and giant clams.

All plants must battle for ground space and sunlight. Some are short-lived, speedy growers while others opt for a slow and steady style. As endurance climbers, treetop squatters, rotters or even just stranglers, plants use every trick in the book to succeed. For in the plant world, the boldest strategies often lead to the greatest success.

Plants live everywhere - from the coldest Arctic wastes to the driest, hottest deserts. To do so they've invented an amazing variety of ingenious survival techniques. Dramatic time-lapse sequences reveal giant water lilies rampaging across the Amazon, mangroves that care for their babies, and plants on a mysterious mountain in South America that survive only by devouring animals.