Without plants, there would be no food, no animals of any sort, no life on earth at all. Yet for most of the time their lives remain a secret to us, hidden, private events.

The reason is merely a difference of time. Plants live on a different time-scale from ours. Thought not obviously to the naked eye, they are constantly on the move: developing, fighting, avoiding or exploiting predators or neighbours, struggling to find food, to increase their territories, to reproduce themselves, to find and hold a place in the sun. We only need to learn to look.

Chapters list

• 1 Travelling
• 2 Feeding and Growing
• 3 Flowering
• 4 The Social Struggle
• 5 Living Together
• 6 Surviving

This is David Attenborough at his best… Full of delights and surprises, even for those who thought they knew about the seemingly passive green world around us.

Professor Grenville Lucas, Keeper of the Herbarium and Library at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew