All language subtitles for BBC.Botany.A.Blooming.History.1of3.A.Confusion.of.Names.720p.HDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup.org.eng

For centuries,
people regarded plants

as solely the creation of God,
and some still do.

Their variety
had no human order to it.

Plants were here to be celebrated,
not questioned.

As a botanist, I understand how
plants are grouped into species.

And yet, 300 years ago, this simple
concept was highly controversial.

To question the order of nature
was to question God himself.

In the late 17th century,

scientific investigation
began to erode religious certainty.

The new discipline of botany was
thinking about plants in new ways.

What botanists were looking for,
and are still looking for,

is how the plant world
fits together,

understanding
what is related to what.

Grouping plants is what
we botanists call "classification".

It's not about making life easier,
though that would be nice,

it's about revealing
the natural order of the world.

Classification of plants is
the basis of the science of botany.

Pioneering botanists really
struggled to invent a system

so that knowledge could be passed on
to future generations

And they began to glimpse a world

where bigger, better,
stronger plants could be created.

For the first time, the study
of plants rejected religious dogma

and embraced science.

Today, botany is at the forefront

of advances that will affect
all our lives.

And how it got there is a tale
of intrigue, of jealous rivalry

and of flawed genius.

It's the story of how science
unlocked the secrets

of what, for me, is our most
precious resource - plants.

This is the University of Oxford
botanic garden.

I should, at this point,
declare an interest

For 22 years, I've been director

of the most compact, yet diverse,
collection of plants in the world.

I have the benefit of centuries
of accumulated knowledge,

because this is the oldest
botanic garden in Britain.

It was founded nearly 400 years ago
to celebrate and encourage
understanding of the plant kingdom.

At its most basic level,

botany enables us to distinguish
between these berries.

That's important because this is
St John's wort,

used by some to treat depression.

This is deadly nightshade,
which will kill you,

and these are blackcurrants.

Botany can also tell us which plants
are related to each other.

That may not sound important,
but it's been known for decades

that this yew tree can be used
to treat breast cancer.

So it was logical to look at plants
related to it, to see if they
also contained useful molecules.

Sure enough, its cousin over there
is being used to treat leukaemia.

This one example shows how important
it is to define and classify plants.

The first major breakthrough
in the classification of plants

was made by a young man studying not
here in Oxford, much as it pains me,

but in Cambridge.

John Ray is a name
most people have never heard of.

Yet, for me, he's one of
the greatest naturalists ever.

CAMERA CLICKS

As a student at trinity college,
and armed with nothing more

than a hand lens and the personality
of a 17th-century geek,

Ray glimpsed something
that no-one else had ever seen -
a natural order.

The 17th century was
an exciting time to be a scientist.

This was the era when Isaac Newton
uncovered laws of physics.

There were revolutions taking place
in the world of science,

and botany is one of them.

CAMERA CLICKS

John Ray's pioneering work
on classification

moved the study of plants away from
superstition and towards science.

Ray did what field botanists do
today, went out into the field,

collected plants and pressed them
in his herbarium press,

brought them home and observed them.

The more he looked,

the more he began to see a pattern
in the plants he collected.

This pattern would be
his first great discovery.

Ray would have gone out
into the Cambridgeshire countryside

and found purple loosestrife.

Purple loosestrife vary in a number
of ways - some are taller,

some have paler flowers.

Some people would have said
these were fundamentally different.

Ray said,
"No. This is just variation.

"You get different plants coming
from seed that has been collected
from the same plant."

My children have different coloured
eyes, different coloured hair.

That doesn't mean they're
a different species. Probably.

He argued that plants can look
different and be closely related.

He'd recognised natural variation
between plants, and he went further.

John Ray realised
that there is a set of characters

that remain unique to a group of
plants, in particular, the flowers.

Inside those flowers, the seeds,

the seed vessel

and the outer parts of the flower,
the sepals.

These were the characteristics
that didn't vary within a species.

These could be used
to define a species.

It may seem a bit strange today,

but before Ray,
no-one knew what a species was,

let alone how to identify one.

For the first time, we had a clear
definition of what was a species.

Defining species in that way
was a huge step forward
for botanical science

and was one of Ray's major
contributions to botany.

His progress was short-lived.

Soon afterwards,
Ray was kicked out of Cambridge.

In 1660, the monarchy is restored
following the death of Cromwell.

On a point of principle,
Ray refuses to swear a new oath of
allegiance to King Charles II.

Had he stayed at the university,
he may well have become as famous

as his contemporary, Isaac Newton.

Instead, he left Cambridge
and walked away into obscurity.

He exchanged
the cloisters of Cambridge

for rooms in a house
owned by one of his students.

This is Middleton Hall
in Staffordshire.

It's here that Ray made
his next discovery.

He'd defined a species
by those characteristics of plants
that don't change.

Now he wanted to go further,

to see if species themselves
can be organised and grouped.

He wanted to know
if they could be classified.

When John Ray was living here
at Middleton Hall,

he was able to get on
with what he did best,

which was looking at plants.

He would collect things,
bring them back

and...he saw things
that other people missed.

He turned his attention
to looking at seeds.

Flowering plants produce seeds.
They all look quite different.

But when you cut them open,

Ray discovered that there seem to be
two sorts of seeds.

When you take a bean seed
and cut it open, it splits into two.

He then started cutting open
other seeds.

When he looked inside these seeds,
he found that some, like this iris,

didn't split nicely into two
like that.

There was just one structure
in the middle.

Ray had uncovered
a fundamental split

in the plant world.

The first group that splits easily
into two, he named the dicots,

and the other, the monocots.

As he looked at the structure
of the plants in these two groups,

he found five more
significant differences -

in the flowers, in the stems,
the roots,

the first leaves to emerge

and the mature leaves.

He realised that any further
advances in classification

could only come about
by looking at the whole plant,

all of its features, bar none.

The man was a genius.
He got it right.

He created order out of the chaos
that is nature.

It's a testament to Ray's brilliance

that his principles of
classification

are taught to this day,
350 years later.

So, as chaplain to the household,
was there a chapel here...?

'These are the rooms where Ray began
to crack the code of classification.

'Today, they're looked after
by Dr Ian Dillamore,

'a trustee of Middleton Hall.

'Although it's open to the public
and you can learn about his work,

'John Ray is hardly
a household name.'

He's not better known because
he wrote his serious works in Latin

and he could not afford
to illustrate them.

His humility in not pushing himself
was very important as well.

In the prefaces, he apologises
for putting readers to the trouble

of reading what he has to say!

LAUGHING: That's terrific!

"Does the world need another book
like this?" he keeps asking.

The answer is, "Desperately."
There was no book like it.

All of his books
stand quite distinguished.

The principles of classification
that John Ray developed
in the 17th century

were largely ignored.

The status quo was undisturbed.

Botanists, farmers and gardeners
had to struggle on

with hearsay and superstition.

Ray got the science right
but the publicity hopelessly wrong.

When you have a good idea,
you need to...

SHOUTS:
..shout it from the rooftops!

That simply wasn't Ray's style.

Modesty is a trait
that could never be levelled

at Sweden's most famous
son of botany,

the self-styled "prince of
the plant kingdom", Carl Linnaeus.

His approach was as far removed from
that of John Ray as you could get.

For Linnaeus,
botany was all about sex!

This is the student thesis
of Carl Linnaeus.

He called it "An introduction
to the courtship of plants".

When Linnaeus wrote about
the sexuality of plants, it wasn't
only novel, it was shocking.

Because he described
the reproductive biology of plants

as if they were humans indulging
in licentious and shocking sex.

This was just the first
deliberately shocking step

in the career of botany's
first celebrity,

the showman and genius
that was Carl Linnaeus.

I've come to Uppsala in Sweden,

where Linnaeus began
his extraordinary career.

Linnaeus just scraped into
Uppsala University to read medicine.

He was a difficult,
under-achieving student

and medicine was regarded
as an inferior subject.

But while here,
Carl became an expert in anatomy.

Plant anatomy.

While his fellow students
concerned themselves with the bloody
workings of the human body,

Linnaeus saw only flowers.

Linnaeus had been obsessed
with the sex lives of plants

since he'd been shown
their reproductive bits and pieces.

So he would look at a plant
like euphorbia

and he would find a male part,
called a stamen,

and a female part referred to
as the pistol,

both present in the same structure.

But not all plants have
the same number of sexual parts.

When he opened up this blue salvia,
he found

two males and one female.

The males are the two
with the yellow pollen on them.

The female is the one
with the blue tip.

He looked in this penstemon,
and when he looked inside this one,

he discovered not one, not two,
but four stamens!

But still only one female.

The more he studied,
the more he became convinced

that he'd found a way
to classify the plant kingdom.

He argued that nothing could be more
fundamental to a plant's identity

than its genitalia.

He believed he could order
the vast diversity of plants

by their sexual parts alone.

In the hallowed halls of learning
across Europe,

scientists were discovering
the laws of their disciplines.

But botany didn't have any, and now
Linnaeus thought he'd found them.

As he rather immodestly put it,
"God created. Linnaeus classified."

For five years, Linnaeus continued
to study - identifying, counting,

noting and describing
the genitalia of plants.

With his research completed,

he was ready to publish.

So here's Linnaeus's
Systema Naturae,

published in 1735.

For a book that changed the world,

it's...small, it's only 14 pages.

I like to think of Linnaeus's work

as like an 18th-century
computer spreadsheet.

The most simple flower
is one that has just one stamen.

Here we have those with one stamen.

Then there are two boxes
in that column,

those with one female
and those with two females.

Then the next column boxes
are those that have two males.

All those plants
only ever have one female.

When you get into three stamens,

there are flowers that have one,
two or three females.

It's beautifully neat and tidy.

It works simply from the left-hand
side starting with one stamen,

right the way across,
to where it's more than 20.

Linnaeus knew if his system
was to succeed,

it had to be accepted in England,

the most important and influential
horticultural market in Europe.

He began what can only be described
as a marketing campaign.

He sent advance copies of his
Systema Naturae to the key players

and he set sail for England.

When Linnaeus arrives in London,

he's not yet 30 years old.

He has no money or friends in
high places, he's shabbily dressed.

He doesn't even speak any English.

He carries his address
in case he becomes lost or waylaid.

All he had going for him
was his incredible confidence.

Soon after arriving in London,
he headed for the Royal Society.

He assumed he'd have no trouble
persuading the great and the good
of the scientific world

of the significance
of his Systema Naturae.

He'd then have access to all
the important men of the kingdom.

He couldn't have been more wrong.

The doors of the Royal Society
were shut firmly in Linnaeus's face.

His marketing campaign
failed spectacularly.

The preview copies of
his sexual system
for ordering nature caused uproar.

Not because of the bold ideas,

but because of the language
Linnaeus used to express them.

One critic condemned Linnaeus's
system as "loathsome harlotry"

because "it was like a tour round
the bed chambers of prostitutes."

In effect, our Carl had written the
screenplay of a Swedish blue movie,

and the English were
deeply offended!

None of which mattered
to our young botanical voyeur.

He was convinced he was right
and everyone else was wrong.

And anyway, he'd come to England
to meet just one person -

the current holder of the title
Linnaeus coveted,

that of the greatest
horticultural authority in Europe.

His name was Philip Miller.

Miller was a diligent gardener

and, like Linnaeus,
a determined self-promoter.

A clash of egos was inevitable.

Miller started his career
as a lowly florist
in the flower markets of London,

awash with new plants
from around the world.

The arrival of this new wealth of
plants brought great opportunities.

But it also came
with its own problems.

What was causing consternation was
the names. Take this, for example.

Known as American wisteria,
Wisteria frutescens,

but also known as
Mr Catesby's new climber.

Which is quaint,
but it is not scientific.

Every country had developed
different names for its plants.

These even varied from
region to region.

There were no
universally agreed names.

This made it impossible
to share advice

when you didn't know if you were
talking about the same plant.

Philip Miller spied the chance
to make his name.

He would put an end
to this confusion

by regulating the naming of plants.

To do this, he founded
the Society of Gardeners.

Once a month they met
at Newhall's coffee house in Chelsea

to discuss and name the flowers,
trees and shrubs
flooding in from the New World.

The purpose of the society
was to compare such things
as should be received from abroad

with those already
in the English gardens,

and discover where
the real differences, if any, lay.

Philip Miller felt
that their whole profession,

the new science of botany,
was in danger.

He wrote, "All the sciences have
each their proper language,

"but botany alone has almost
as many different languages
as there are different authors."

Miller believed that,
as the self-appointed most talented,

the Society of Gardeners
would soon compile a catalogue

of all the foreign species
growing in English gardens.

Sadly, the society collapsed,

overwhelmed by the enormity
of the task.

But it made Miller's name.

He was appointed head of the most
prestigious botanic garden in
London, the Chelsea Physic Garden.

As he began his work,

Miller, who was never short
of confidence,

promised that Chelsea would soon
out-vie all other gardens in Europe.

And he was probably right.

In the 50 years Miller was here,

he utterly transformed the garden.

He was directly responsible
for doubling

the number of foreign species
successfully grown in Britain.

The purpose of a physic garden

was to grow plants
with medicinal properties.

Miller went further.

He developed it
into a centre of economic botany,

growing cotton and roots
used in the dye industry.

A lot of the plants here
have the second name tinctorius,

which implies
that they were used as a dye.

Here, for example, we've got
dyer's weld, Roseda luteola.

This here for a red dye.

There's other dye plants here,
like woad,

now being used as
a treatment for cancer.

Now you've got dyes,
you need something to dye.

Here, lots of plants
used for their fibres.

We've got sisal,
for example, for rope.

These are used in Japan.

And finally, one of the plants that
changed the world, really. Cotton.

Hard to imagine the history
of America being the same,

had it not been
for the cultivation of cotton.

'Daniel Pretlove is one of
the gardeners here at Chelsea.

'An aim of the garden is to keep it
looking as it did in Miller's time.'

We still keep here,
the vegetable beds, the herbal beds,

the pharmaceutical beds set out
as Miller had them in his time.

They were reinstalled
about 15 years ago.

He's a great person to have in your
history, he's such a major figure
in the history of English gardening.

He was here for such a long time.
He changed the face of horticulture.

'Miller was an innovator.

'To grow the more exotic species
he designed glasshouses

'with their own intricate
heating systems.'

Miller had glasshouses. How did
he heat them? They were coal-fired.

Did somebody have to stay up
all night stoking the boilers?

They usually had someone.

Usually the under gardener,
the apprentice,
had to put out the fires.

Trainees today just don't know that
they have such an easy time of it!
That's right.

In his day, Philip Miller was
regarded as the most distinguished

and influential gardener in Britain.

It wasn't simply for
what he'd achieved at Chelsea.

It was for what he'd written.

Miller took the notes from
the ill-fated Society of Gardeners

and compiled the first comprehensive
dictionary of gardening.

Miller's book
is this great bringing together
of the knowledge of that time.

He's gathering together names
and horticultural practice

and putting it in one place.

For the first time, everything
you needed to know about every plant

found in an English garden
was in one place.

It became the standard work,
the bible, if you like.

Miller simply listed everything
clearly and in alphabetical order.

He made no attempt to classify.

His dictionary, published in 1731,

became THE reference work
for gardeners around the world.

All the names given to
the same plant were listed together,

eliminating confusion.

The dictionary gathered more
authority with every new edition.

And it turned Philip Miller
into a superstar.

When you start
on a new scientific venture

you must gather together all
that is known about your subject.

That was Miller's great
contribution.

His dictionary brought order
and focus to all the knowledge
available at that time.

His dictionary became
an international best-seller.

This is what brought Carl Linnaeus
to Chelsea Physic Garden in 1736.

Linnaeus wanted Miller to promote
the sexual system of classification

by including it in the next edition
of the famous dictionary.

But the meeting of the two egos
was a frosty affair.

Linnaeus, we know,
was an opinionated chap.

In Miller he had found his match.

Miller dismissed Linnaeus's
classification system.

He predicted "that it will be
of a very short duration".

Linnaeus had hoped
for Miller's support.

Now he derided Miller's achievements
as "mere plant collecting".

This was the beginning
of a life-long rivalry.

So Linnaeus stared failure
in the face,

but there was one chink of light for
the self-styled prince of botanists.

Oxford.

Linnaeus came here,

to our botanic garden in Oxford,
to see Johann Jacob Dillenius,

Professor of Botany.

He had read Linnaeus's book

and had not been convinced by it.

As Linnaeus demonstrated
his vast knowledge of plants

and the beautiful simplicity
of his sexual classification system,

the two became firm friends.

They were inseparable
during Linnaeus's time in Oxford,

and they were to write to each other
for the rest of their lives.

When Linnaeus left, Dillenius
begged him under tears and kisses
to live and die with him.

He offered to share his salary
to keep him in Oxford.

Linnaeus had saved face.
With the University of Oxford ready
to accept his classification system,

he could return to Sweden
with his head held high.

Who needed Philip Miller?

Linnaeus arrived back in Uppsala

with an ambitious plan
to transform the Swedish economy.

His confidence in his own abilities
knew no bounds.

However,
he did raise sufficient funds

to establish
a National Botanic Garden.

And this is the result,
the botanic garden at Uppsala,

which Linnaeus had laid out
according to his sexual system,
as it still is today.

The plants are set out in beds

according to how many sexual parts
they have.

I've wanted to visit Linnaeus's
botanic garden for many years

and see his work first hand.

Coming to Linnaeus's garden
is a pilgrimage for any botanist.

Seeing the plants laid out
according to his sexual system

really is a testament
to the genius of the man

and to his confidence that this was
the system that people would adopt.

Just six years after his arrival
in England as a penniless upstart,

Linnaeus was Professor of Botany
at the university and the director
of his own garden at Uppsala,

where he settled into a career
of continued research and teaching.

Here he could have stood,
master of all he surveyed.

'He had status, wealth
and a crowd of adoring pupils

'who he used to take
on lively botanical trails.

'The original Linnaean trails
have been reintroduced

'by Dr Mariette Manktelow
of Uppsala University.

'I joined her
for a spot of botanising.'

He was a marvellous teacher.
He was one of the best.

He was very charismatic
and people loved to listen to him.

He really inspired his students.

These excursions,

they weren't the subdued botanising
that you would expect? No.

They were fantastic. There could be
100 students... Amazing! ..singing.

They stopped at his house
and everybody shouted,

"Hooray for Linnaeus!"
They were very happy.

Word spread that this was
how you learnt botany. Yeah.

He had hundreds of students
coming with him in the 1740s.

'It was on these trails that
Linnaeus identified a significant
weakness with botany at the time.

'The names that were used for plants
were very unwieldy.'

On one of the journeys he made to
Stockholm he found this trifolium.

'For example,
we came across this clover.

'Its name in Linnaeus's time was...'

Here we have one of those woodland
plants that Linnaeus also saw here.

This is viola.

'For Linnaeus and his students,
this viola's full title was...'

'These were descriptions of
every minute detail of the plant.

'In this case, it translates as...'

'To teach, even just write down,
these foot-long names had become
completely impractical.'

How do you carry out field biology
like this

if the name takes 30 seconds to say?

Linnaeus set out to find a neat
and easy way for naming plants,

just as he thought
he had found a neat and easy way
of classifying them.

What Linnaeus realised was all a
plant name had to do was designate.

It did not need to describe.

A universal language
was needed to do this,

and that is what Linnaeus gave us.

He came up with a beautifully simple
set of rules.

He reduced the lengthy names
to just two words.

The first word is like
a manufacturer's name.

The second word...

refers to the models
of the things they make.

So, take...

..Becomes viola mirabilis.

Rather easier to remember. Much
quicker to write down. Very simple.

Over the next two decades,

Linnaeus applied his two-name system
to over 7,700 plants.

When he published them in his next
best-seller, Species Plantarum,

it was a giant step forward
for science.

Whereas Miller had listed
all the names of every plant,

Linnaeus had come up with a system
which was simple and short.

So this is a catalogue

of every plant name
that has ever been used.

And each species has...

all the names that have been used
plus Linnaeus's new name,

the short name, the two-word name.

This really sets the precedent
for standardisation of names.

Without permanent names there can be
no permanence of knowledge.

One after another, botanists
and gardeners around the world

accepted the new two-name or
binomial system, turning to Linnaeus

for the final decisions
on what plants should be called.

With the exception, that is,
of a certain Philip Miller.

Miller did not approve,
railing instead, that Linnaeus had
"the vanity of being the law-giver".

It was not until the eighth and last
edition of Miller's dictionary

that Linnaeus's binomial system
was finally included.

In his autobiography Linnaeus says

that he did not think that the
binomial system would be his legacy,

but it was,
and it's a big contribution.

In fact,
it's a colossal contribution.

Thanks to Linnaeus, botanists
around the world could now identify

and classify plants,

teach, correspond
and advance their science easily,

efficiently, coherently.

Here in the botanic garden
in Oxford, as elsewhere,

we still use Linnaeus's
binomial system.

Some Linnaeus named after botanical
heroes, thus immortalising them.

But for his arch rival Philip Miller

he had something else in mind.

For Philip Miller,
Linnaeus spitefully chose

a rather weedy member
of the daisy family.

Linnaeus believed
there should be a connection

between the botanist and the plant.

The outer stumpy petals of the
Milleria flowers reputedly refer

to Miller's plump figure.

Now, Linnaeus has a reputation for
being arrogant and a self-publicist.

And yet the plant he chose
to name after himself,

the twin flower,
or Linnaea borealis,

is a sweet pretty little thing.

Perhaps Linnaea borealis is a very
rare example of Linnaean modesty.

Maybe he was human after all.

Linnaeus's naming method was very
successful and survives to this day.

The more botanists looked
at his sexual system,

the more flawed it appeared.

There were inconsistencies and
anomalies you can't have in science.

If you follow Linnaeus's system,
you look at a lily,

it has six male parts,
three female parts.

If you look at a yucca, it has
six male parts, three female parts.

The same is true of butcher's broom.
Same is true of asparagus.

Then you look at these plants,
and they are so totally different.

The number of male and female parts
can vary among different flowers

on the same plant.

It was not a reliable way
to group plants.

Through his obsession with plant
genitalia and perhaps his arrogance,

Linnaeus had ignored
a fundamental flaw.

His mistake was to focus

on just one feature,
the sexual organs of plants.

As John Ray had warned,
any classification system has to
take into account the whole plant.

As Linnaeus's system
fell into disrepute,

botanists began to rediscover the
work of the long-forgotten John Ray.

Amongst them was Philip Miller,
who had the last laugh on his rival.

He had stood firm

against the juggernaut
of Linnaeus's self-promotion.

Chelsea Physic Garden never embraced
the sexual system of classification.

Without question, Miller was
the outstanding gardener of his age,

but that doesn't mean
he was popular.

Despite his fame, not a single
portrait of Miller exists.

Not even a sketch. Why?

Because, like Linnaeus, he never
underestimated his own ability,

and he suffered fools not at all.

So on his death, he left no friends
to celebrate his achievements,

but he left plenty of enemies who
would rather forget he ever existed.

The world of plants could be
a brutal arena with colossal egos.

It could also be a dangerous place

if you wanted
to push the boundaries.

Britain was still
a God-fearing society.

The power of religious authorities
remained a block
on scientific advance.

If you were smart, you'd carry out
experiments away from prying eyes.

OWL HOOTS

In 1716, a man called
Thomas Fairchild

makes his way furtively
to his garden.

He carefully closes the door of
his potting shed and sets to work.

He wants to try an experiment that
has never been done successfully.

Thomas Fairchild
was a successful nursery man.

In Hoxton, north London, he sold
not only British native species

but exotic plants

that people had sent him,
but suppliers were unreliable.

He decided to take nature
into his own hands.

Behind closed doors,
Fairchild turned creator.

He wasn't interested in
classification, and he didn't want
to improve an existing flower.

He wanted to create a new plant

so that he could sell blooms
that his rivals didn't have.

Fairchild was about to create
an artificial hybrid flower,

a plant that couldn't be found
in nature.

He had prepared two flowers,
a carnation and a sweet william.

He took male pollen
from the sweet william...

..and he placed it on the female
part of the carnation.

And then, he waited.

He waited until the carnation
produced seeds.

Then he sowed them.
This was the true test.

When his hybrid seeds grew
and burst into flower,

he knew he'd succeeded.

To dry and preserve his new plant,

he cut the stem of the ruffled pink
bloom and pressed it carefully

between two sheets of paper.

And this is the result.

This simple specimen
isn't much to look at,

but for botanists like me,
it's a milestone -

the world's first
scientifically created hybrid.

But when he finally emerged,
clutching his sample,

it was not in triumph, but in dread.

Fairchild knew
that most of his contemporaries

were still enthralled to the story
of creation in the Bible.

God had made all the species of
plant and animal, and that was that.

300 years ago, Thomas Fairchild

thought he had "created"
a new species.

And his guilt was immense
because he had cast doubt

on the story of the creation.

His reaction to assuage his guilt
was to make a benefaction

to this church in Shoreditch so that
an annual sermon could be preached

to glorify the work of creation.

He knew how important
his discovery was.

He had made a new plant, and that
should not have been possible.

He knew
that man's relationship with plants
would never be the same again.

It was nearly four years

before Fairchild dared tell
the world about his experiment.

On 4 February 1720, he made his way
anxiously to the headquarters
of the Royal Society in London.

He presented his pressed flower
to the scientific world, fearful of
the reaction he might receive.

"The experiment by Mr Fairchild
found a plant of a middle nature

"between a sweet william
and a carnation flower,

"a specimen which produced no seed
but is barren, like the mule."

These are the minutes of the meeting

when Fairchild
came to the Royal Society.

He really didn't need to worry.

The members were able to see beyond
the faded colours

of this now famous exhibit,
and realise the significance.

The Fellows of the Royal Society
were not so concerned with the Bible

as excited by the possibilities
that the hybrid presented.

But there was a problem.

Fairchild's hybrid
could not produce seeds.

It was sterile. Nobody knew why.

For all the progress,
the steps towards classification,

and understanding the sex lives
of plants,

to the first plant dictionary
and a universal naming system,

still botanists could not answer
this fundamental question.

Why was Fairchild's mule sterile?

What was the missing piece
of the jigsaw

that would enable scientists
to create fertile hybrids,

stronger crops,
more efficient medicines?

The missing link
was an understanding of
how different plant species evolved.

This missing link arrived
in the shape of Charles Darwin and
his book on The Origin Of Species.

Botany was a passion of Darwin's.

He demonstrated that plants had
the ability to adapt to surroundings

and, as a result, can increase
their chances of survival.

He'd set sail in 1831
on board the HMS Beagle.

The ship's naturalist, he was
fascinated by the diversity of plant
life in the southern hemisphere.

Darwin saw that flowers
which are pollinated by the wind

have little colour.

While those that need to attract
insects are brightly coloured.

For over a decade, he observed
plants and carried out experiments.

He understood that natural selection
applied as much to plants

as it did to animals.

Darwin's theory of evolution,
finally published in 1859,

may have put the cat amongst
the pigeons in religious circles.

But for botanists, it was like manna
from heaven, finding the Holy Grail,
because it explained everything.

19th-century botanists recognised
the significance of Darwin's work

on how and why plants evolved
into different groups.

In his notes for the book,

Darwin uses this illustration.

It's the metaphor of a tree,

showing how species diverged
as they evolved.

Growing from a central trunk,
some branches dying out,

others sprouting further growth.

The newest twigs and leaves far away
from the roots but still connected.

The Origin Of Species changed
everything.

Darwin explained
why we CAN classify plants.

The plants in a well-defined natural
group share a common ancestor.

He explained why plants
with fewer things in common

are more distantly related,

and why plants that have
a lot in common are more likely
to produce fertile offspring.

Botanists now understood

why Fairchild's experiment
150 years earlier had failed.

The plant he bred was sterile

because the carnation
and the sweet william

come from two distinct species.

They're not closely related enough
to breed successfully.

This understanding of the importance
of classification

underpins botanical science
to this day.

I've come to probably the most
famous botanic garden in the world,
Kew Gardens.

It's where I trained as a gardener.

The work begun by Miller, Linnaeus,
Fairchild and John Ray

continues here.

Simple field lenses are supplemented
by 21st-century tools

such as scanning electron
microscopes and DNA analysis.

The work to define
and classify plants

is as vital as ever.

One of the scientists,
Professor Monique Simmonds,

came across a plant in Ghana that
was being used to treat malaria.

She was curious to see if there was
scientific basis for the treatment.

The plant belongs
to the same family as sage.

The herbarium archive at Kew found
300 species in the same group,

62 of which have also been used
in traditional medicines.

Professor Simmonds
identified her specimen

as Plectranthus barbatus...

..and began a chemical analysis.

She found a totally new
anti-malarial compound.

The active compounds
that we're looking at appear to be
in the hairs on the leaves.

Right. And when you stress
the plant, when you cut it back,

the leaves that then regrow

seem to have a higher concentration
of the active compounds.

That was encouraging,
but was Plectranthus barbatus

the best source of
the anti-malarial compound?

Could other related species
produce more of the compound

or a more potent version?

Before we develop the project,
we want to make sure that we've got
the most effective species.

If you look at the plants
around us here, are the ones
that are similar related,

or are the ones
that are diverse in style related?

Molecular data can give us
an insight into one species
and its "near neighbours".

Near neighbours most likely share
a similar type of chemistry.

The molecular data
is the DNA fingerprinting?

The DNA fingerprinting is
what we're using as molecular data.

The leaves of the Plectranthus
are ground in a pestle and mortar,

dipped in a hot bath mixed with
chloroform, then shaken and spun.

The sediment is removed,
and when ethanol is added

strands of DNA are visible,
even to the naked eye.

The sample is then frozen,
along with another 40,000

that make up an extraordinary
database at Kew.

By comparing this DNA with that
of other species of Plectranthus,

Professor Simmonds and the team
came up with a precise family tree

showing the nearest relatives
to her original specimen.

The DNA tree has enabled us to
identify four or five other species

that might contain similar
or more active compounds,

and that's the exciting part
of the project.

That's what we're putting
our efforts into.

We'd really like to find
a new anti-malarial

that could serve as a platform
for development of a new drug.

That would really be exciting.

The malaria project demonstrates
how valuable it is to understand
the connections between plants.

Incredible to think how far
we've come since the early pioneers.

Ray, with his hand lens, could only
study plants from the outside.

Now, with modern equipment, we can
look from the inside outwards.

The ability to harness
and manipulate plants

was made possible by the
classification of the plant kingdom.

The importance of botany and those
early pioneers cannot be overstated.

I know you'd expect me to say that,
but it's true.

'Next time on
Botany: A Blooming History,

'I'll look at how botanists
wrestled with the question

'of what plants do with water,
sunlight and carbon dioxide,

'the amazing process
known as photosynthesis.'

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