Throughout his long, glorious, planet-encompassing career, David Attenborough has taught us many things: how to keep calm in the company of gorillas; how high a killer whale can toss a seal; and what a mountain of bat crap looks like. But one of his most profound – and surprising – lessons came in the form of 1995's The Private Life of Plants.
When it was first announced, it sounded like a bit of a let-down. After so many thrilling revelations from the animal kingdom, a focus on the botanical didn't seem the most exciting proposition. But never doubt Attenborough. As well as introducing us to ancient trees, giant waterlillies and huge fungi, The Private Life of Plants also contains a breathtaking and humbling point: that plants and humans exist on an entirely different timescale.
Over the course of six episodes, stop-motion cameras translate the life-cycles of plants from across the planet into a timespan we can understand; or, as Attenborough puts it, the cameras "condense three months into 20 seconds – and the desolation of winter quickly warms into the riot of spring".
Appropriately enough, it's a box set that grows on you. Attenborough's ceaseless enthusiasm – delivered in that calm, calming though clearly excited tone – is hypnotic. There's his gleeful admiration for killers like the carnivorous trumpet pitchers ("They're doomed! Where one ant goes, others are likely to follow!"); as well as his appreciation of the biggest flower on earth, the titan arum, which not only dwarfs our presenter but also "smells very strongly of bad fish".
Then there is his final plea for conservation, using words that were worrying back then, but seem chilling now: "Ever since we arrived on this planet, we've cut them down, dug them up, burnt them and poisoned them. The time has now come for us to cherish our green inheritance, not to pillage it – for without it, we will surely perish."
