Under The Microscope

THE PRIVATE LIFE OF PLANTS, by David Attenborough; BBC Books/Reed 1995; 320 pp; $49.95

Reviewed by Vicki Hyde

If you haven't been watching The Private Life of Plants on television, make a point of catching the remaining programmes and see if you can find a friend who has the earlier ones on video. They're well worth it. Or, if the six-part series is over by the time you read this, try checking this book out. You won't have the incredible time-lapse photography which makes the television material so stunning, but you will have an enjoyable and enlightening read teamed up with a goodly collection of illuminating photos.

The "private life" is one that is full of as much passion and tension as in any part of the animal kingdom, and all the more impressive for being conducted, as Attenborough points out, on a different time-scale to that we are used to. His mission is to bring us an awareness of this different world, from the lichen clinging to Antarctic rocks to the rare world of the tropical titan arum.

"[W]e can then appreciate very well the ferocity with which a strangler fig squeezes the life from its victims, the determination with which a mistletoe seedling plugs its root into the branch of a tree, as well as the languorous grace with which an orchid unfurls its complex blooms," writes Attenborough. It is thanks to books like this that such appreciation can continue long after the TV series has been through its (hoped-for) reruns.

Vicki Hyde is the editor of New Zealand Science Monthly.