The Green Planet South Africa Launch

THE GREEN PLANET REVEALS THE STRANGE AND WONDERFUL WORLD OF PLANTS LIKE NEVER BEFORE

This exclusive virtual event takes you behind the scenes with inspiring stories from Series Producer Rupert Barrington and Producer Rosie Thomas.

Tuesday 1st February, 11:00 – 12:00 CAT

The hour session will include a Q&A with Rupert and Rosie.

This will be followed by an audience Q&A.

Hosted by Nompumelelo Maduna, Miss Earth SA 2021.

Rosie Thomas produced Episode 3 – Seasonal Worlds – which features South Africa so make sure you have your questions ready!

Please contact your DStv Media Sales Representative for an invitation.

The Green Planet premieres on BBC Earth DStv channel 184 on Sunday 13th February at 16:00

Made by BBC Studios’ world-renowned Natural History Unit and joining the globally renowned Planet strand, The Green Planet sees Sir David Attenborough travel across the globe, from the USA to South Africa, Croatia to northern Europe. From deserts to water worlds, from tropical forests to the frozen north, David finds brand new stories and gains a fresh understanding of how plants live their lives. He meets the largest living things that have ever existed; trees that care for each other; plants that hunt animals and a plant with the most vicious defences in the world.

We see how science and technologies have advanced, and how our understanding of the ways in which plants behave and interact has evolved. The series is also a great passion project for Sir David Attenborough – airing at a critical moment, just as our green world stands on the brink of collapse.

Pioneering motion-control robotics systems allow us to take a magical journey into the world of plants, in real-time and in time-lapse, to watch their lives on their timescale and from their perspective. Thermal cameras, macro frame-stacking to give incredible depth-of-field, ultra-high-speed cameras and the latest developments in microscopy all allow us to reveal a fresh view of the lives of plants and their incredible beauty.

Plants don’t act alone, they forge intimate relationships, as friends and enemies, with other plants, animals and even with humans. The more we understand them the more we realise that they do things we previously thought of as ‘animal behaviour’. They count, they hunt, they deceive, they communicate, they protect their relatives and they manipulate animals for their own ends. Contrary to how it may appear, when plants and animals interact, the plant is usually in charge.

Filmed around the world, The Green Planet will be the first immersive portrayal of an unseen, inter-connected world.

A BBC Studios’ Natural History Unit production for BBC and PBS, and co-produced by the Open University, bilibili, ZDF German Television, France Télévisions and NHK

The Green Planet Producer
BBC Studios

The Green Planet Series Producer
BBC Studios

Host
Miss Earth SA 2021

THE GREEN PLANET FEATURES SEQUENCES THAT WERE FILMED IN SOUTH AFRICA

The South African Cape is coloured by millions of flowers, all competing for pollinators. In episode three, the team film a huge summer fire which wipes the land clean, but it’s not a disaster… its an opportunity. A new shoot appears through the blackened earth – the Fire Lily, which hasn’t flowered since the last fire 15 years ago. It emerges into a world with no competitors at all.

The Fire Lily has never been filmed before. The Fynbos region of South Africa boasts the densest aggregation of flowers in the world, all competing for the attention of pollinators. Every summer fires break out and burn up whole hillsides, destroying all the flowers in matter if hours – fynbos plants need fire. The smoke even percolates into the soil, where it is detected by a bulb and triggers it to send up a shoot. This grows into a red flower – the Fire Lily. It is the only flower in the blackened, burned landscape and so it has all the pollinators to itself.

Another plant filmed in South Africa is the ceratocaryum. It’s a long, spindly grass that stands about two metres tall. Its seeds perfectly mimic antelope dung – they even smell like it. In the height of summer, they flip the seeds to the ground for a dung beetle to come along, roll the seeds away, and bury them.

Rosie Thomas said ‘I find it fascinating how these relationships evolved to allow the plant to take advantage of the animal, when normally it’s the other way around.’