When biologist David George Haskell titled his latest book “How Flowers Made Our World,” he knew the idea might sound preposterous at first blush. David joins me this week to explain how flowers really did transform the Earth and shape how we live.
David lives in Atlanta, Georgia, where he is an adjunct professor of environmental sciences at Emory University. He’s also a fellow of the Linnean Society of London and a Guggenheim fellow. He holds a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from Cornell University. His books have twice been finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction: 2012’s “The Forest Unseen” and in 2022’s “Sounds Wild and Broken.” His 2017 book, “The Songs of Trees” won the John Burroughs Medal.
Biologist David George Haskell’s new book is “How Flowers Made Our World: The Story of Nature’s Revolutionaries.” Photo Credit: Katherine Lehman – Julia Falkner
David studied ecology in college and grad school and went on to be a professor for 30 years, taking undergraduates outside and teaching them about life. Now he writes books to share joy and curiosity about plants, forests, birds and anything that helps humans relate to nature.
He points out that flowers are culturally important: We give them as gifts, use them to woo someone, bring them when we bury someone, etc.
“ We have this understanding that they’re kind of important, but we don’t think of them as world-makers or revolutionaries,” he says. “ But if you look back at the world before flowers, and then the world after flowers, these are two completely different planets.”
A Connection to Plants from an Early Age
“From an early age as a kid, I loved to just get my hands in the soil and grow vegetables,” David recalls. He gravitated toward crops that seemed dramatic: huge squash, 12-foot sunflowers, that sort of thing.
“ I still find those things delightful, but maybe I have slightly different taste these days,” he adds. “… It seems such a miracle to be able to put a tiny little seed in the ground. And then that seed had all the intelligence inside it that is needed to just turn air and sunlight and soil — with a little bit of help from me — into something magnificent like a sunflower or a squash plant or tomatoes or whatever it is that we’re growing.”
These days, he realizes it’s not just the plant itself that is worthy of marveling at. It’s all the people over centuries who bred, saved and passed down those seeds to get to the crops that exist today.
“ I really feel this sort of mystical sense of connection to the people who’ve come before us and a great sense of gratitude toward them,” he says.
Prehistoric Worldwide Transformation
David’s new book explains how communities of flowering plants and the animals that grazed on them shaped the world as we know it.
“ They stitched together all these species and new arrangements and created habitats that we all benefit from today,” he says. “Without all that carbon stored in the rainforest and the prairies, we’d be really cooking.”
Cranefly orchid seeds.
Photo Courtesy of David George Haskell
How Flowers Made the World
“ Flowers evolved maybe 130 million years ago, which is actually pretty late in the big scheme of things,” David says. “Complex animals had already been around for like 400 million years and land plants for nearly that long. So flowers are these kinda late-comers. But when they arrived, the world was never again the same.”
The most important habitats on the planet were founded on flowering plants: rainforests, prairies, mangroves. Human agriculture is also based on flowering plants.
Bees, butterflies and grazing animals did not exist prior to flowering plants — and humans would not have evolved the way they did without flowering plants,” David points out.
“ This is a revolution that was catalyzed by flowers crafting new relationships with pollinators and reinventing ways of producing seeds and fruit,” he says. “… Flowers had all sorts of innovations that helped them revolutionize the world, and so I really do think we live on a floral planet.”
David says the point of his book is to put flowers back at the center of how the world came to be.
When Flowers Came into Being
The Earth thrived even before flowers evolved into existence.
“ There was plenty of vitality and photosynthesis from tree ferns and cycads and other ancient plants — so there were lots of thriving ecosystems, and of course, lots of animals,” David notes. “Birds evolved before flowering plants and so did mammals. So the world was pretty interesting and diverse. But then the party really got going with flowering plants, partly because they flipped the narrative with insects.”
Until flowers appeared on the planet, insects had been basically nothing but trouble for plants, according to David. Insects would do many of the things they still do today: eat leaves, suck sap, cut roots.
But then flowers turned some leaves into colorful petals, made aromas and changed their shapes into what’s basically an advertising billboard for insects, he says.
He imagines evolving flowers thinking: “We can turn our former enemies into cooperative partners.”
Instead of chucking pollen into the wind, plants convinced insects to transport their pollen for them. Unlike wind-driven pollination, insect-driven pollination is very direct and efficient, moving pollen from one flower straight to another.
“I think of them as like very accurate Cupid,” David quips.
Insect-driven pollination led flowering plants to go through genetic storms in which they doubled their DNA. They invented new petals, new ways of being tolerant to drought and salt, and new ways of carrying water through their bodies.
“ They can transport massive amounts of water because they invented these new plumbing systems because of this genetic flexibility that allowed them to keep the breathing pores on their leaves open much longer than most of the plants,” David explains. “So they can keep feasting late into the late afternoon and when it’s dry, and when a whole load of flowering plants get together and do this, you have a rainforest. And because they’ve moved so much water into the atmosphere that it changes the weather, it changes the climate. And there were no rainforests before flowering plants.”
Tea Camellia sinensis.
Photo Courtesy of David George Haskell
Flowers Are Targets for Pollinators
Flowers have properties we can see and smell — color, shape and fragrance that make them attractive to pollinators. But they also have properties that only the pollinators can detect, such as UV patterns that look like arrows or a bullseye, telling insects exactly where they can find nectar.
“The great thing about flowers is it allows great specificity,” David says.
For example, a fig tree that only attracts one species of wasp, which carries its pollen to other fig trees. It attracts the wasp by advertising that it has the nectar that wasp craves. Some orchids smell like female wasps, and even look like a wasp.
“The bees are visiting not out of a sense of wanting to be cooperative,” David says. “The bees want something out of this. They want nectar, and they’re going to eat the pollen. And baby bees are eating almost nothing but pollen and nectar.”
Flowers also have electrical fields that help insects find what they are looking for.
“People have recently discovered that every flower has an invisible electrical field that has a specific shape to it, like a daffodil has a different shape from a rose or a violet,” David says. “And some insects like harbor flies and some bees have special hairs on their body and they can detect these electrical fields.”
Goatsbeard has a distinct shape that attracts native bees, syrphid flies, beetles, and wasps.
Photo Courtesy of David George Haskell
Grasslands
Grasslands — or prairies, steppes and savannas — are ecosystems built by flowering plants.
We may not think of grasses as flowering plants, but they do have flowers. They aren’t very showy because they are wind pollinated and don’t have to impress insects.
“ Especially when you’re in a place with a lot of fire and the climate is a little cooler, grasses tend to take over and actually push out the forest,” David says. “So in Africa, starting about 10 million years ago, the grasses spread out, and you had the evolution of all kinds of cool grazing animals like zebras and giraffes and things like that.”
One of those early animals was the ancestor of modern humans. Still today, grasses are an important source of calories in the human diet: wheat, oats, corn, sugarcane, rice, millet, barley and more.
And humans also eat grazing animals.
David says while a grassland may sound like a boring lawn, to an ecologist it’s an amazing place for biodiversity.
“ Grass seed is absolutely loaded with food. And that’s why they’re so successful ecologically, because the mother grass plant loads up that seed full of starch and protein and oil. They give their little embryos a food hamper to go out into the world. And that was one of the inventions of all flowering plants. Flowering plants are the only species of plant that put all that food store in the seed. Grasses really went to town on that, and our ancestors are like, ‘Hey, we can eat this stuff.’”
The wheat we use to make bread and pasta is packed with nourishment the seeds stored for baby plants. Humans have cleared forests in order to grow more wheat, David points out. “ There’s more wheat in the world now than there ever was. So we have become their very diligent helpers.”
Grass and Fire
Before humans got involved in the story, grasses had formed a three-way cooperative relationship among grass, fire and grazing mammals.
Many grasses grow a lot of flammable material above the ground, and at the end of the growing season, they just leave it there. It doesn’t drop off. “And they’re essentially inviting fire into their home, and then the slightest little lightning strike, boom, the whole prairie is on fire,” he says.
For the grass, the fire is beneficial because it clears out brambles and saplings, and all that competition turns them into fertilizer. The grass survives the fire and resprouts from underground.
“ So for literally millions of years there’s been a kind of symbiotic relationship between fire and grass. And then grazing mammals got involved. Before grasses, there were no grazing mammals. These are mammals that have big, tough teeth that can grind down the grass and deal with having a lot of sand in their mouth.”
Grazing mammals are like living fire: They graze the grass down and drop some fertilizer behind, helping grassland regenerate.
“You can think of fire and mammals and grasses as sort of dancing around one another and sustaining one another,” David says.
Time-Traveling Magnolia Plants
Magnolia plants have flowers the size of dinner plates and smell delicious, David says.
“ There is a lot more to them than their sensory gorgeousness,” he adds. “They’re like time travelers.”
That’s because magnolia plants are very little changed from the first flowers on the planet. “They’d been around for 50 million years before Tyrannosaurus rex evolved.”
They have big flowers that communicate very clearly to insects, particularly beetles, with also pollinated magnolias tens of millions of years ago, as is evident in fossils. These flowers also make pollen and eggs in the same structure, so pollination is very efficient.
A southern magnolia. Magnolia plants are very little changed from the first flowers on the planet.
Photo Courtesy of David George Haskell
Under the Sea
Seagrasses are not true grasses but are grass-like plants that grow in the muddy, sandy edges of continents all over the world.
“ These are flowering plants that bloom underwater and they hold carbon and they protect the sea coast from storms,” David says. “ Lots of fish and little invertebrates and clams depend on them for breeding, and we knew almost nothing about them until just a few, few decades ago. And now there are great restoration efforts happening to restore seagrass meadows.”
Seagrasses actually store carbon sometimes 50 times faster and more effectively than forests can.
“So it was really fun researching that chapter and getting my hands and feet in the mud and going out with some of the folks who are restoring these amazing meadows.”
Seagrass is a grass-like plant that blooms underwater.
Photo Courtesy of David George Haskell
Roses
Roses produce 400 different aromatic chemicals — not for humans but to attract bees and other pollinators.
“For the last few thousand years, humans have become part of that because many of the roses in our backyards were the ones that we use to make perfumes. These are ones that have been bred in the horticulture trade both in Asia and in Europe and other parts of the world and hybridized” to look great or smell great.
In researching his book, David visited Grasse in the South of France.
“ This is a birthplace of modern perfumery. They invented the marketing, the science, the extraction technologies. They inherited a lot of this from other cultures, but they really figured out how to do it at a level that wasn’t just accessible to kings and queens, but that could be accessible to everyone.”
Rosses at Grasse in the south of France.
Photo Courtesy of David George Haskell
Garden for Nature
You can have a garden that is delightful for you but is also full of native insects and birds feeding on them, David says.
“I’ve done a little experiment in my backyard here in Atlanta, planting some of these native plantings next to other plants that are more ornamental,” he says.
The difference in the level of insect activity is incredible: bees, colorful beetles and other creatures gravitate toward the natives.
“When I’m feeling depressed or beaten down by the world, I’ll just go sit with my Georgia asters,” David shares.
He encourages everyone to find a flower — out in the woods, in a city park or in your backyard — and to sit with that flower and imagine the world from the flower’s perspective. Who is this flower trying to talk with? What does this flower need? How did it get here? Why is it shaped the way it is?
“Some of those questions you may not be able to answer, but in a way, it’s a sort of a meditation with a flower and an invitation to decenter our human perspective and get into the perspective of flowers themselves.”
“How Flowers Made Our World” was published last month.
If you haven’t listened to my conversation with David George Haskell on “How Flowers Made Our World,” you can do so now by scrolling to the top of the page and clicking the Play icon in the green bar under the page title.
How are flowers meaningful in your life? Let us know in the comments below.
Links & Resources
Some product links in this guide are affiliate links. See full disclosure below.
Episode 265: Finding the Mother Tree: How Trees Take Care of Each Other, with Suzanne Simard
Episode 374: The Insect Crisis: How Losing the Little Things Creates Big Problems
Episode 376: The Light Eaters: The Unseen World of Plant Intelligence
joegardener Online Gardening Academy™: Popular courses on gardening fundamentals; managing pests, diseases & weeds; seed starting and more.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Organic Vegetable Gardening: My new premium online course. The course is designed to be a comprehensive guide to starting, growing, nurturing and harvesting your favorite vegetables, no matter what you love to eat, no matter where you live, no matter your level of gardening experience.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Master Seed Starting: Everything you need to know to start your own plants from seed — indoors and out.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Beginning Gardener Fundamentals: Essential principles to know to create a thriving garden.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Growing Epic Tomatoes: Learn how to grow epic tomatoes with Joe Lamp’l and Craig LeHoullier.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Master Pests, Diseases & Weeds: Learn the proactive steps to take to manage pests, diseases and weeds for a more successful garden with a lot less frustration. Just $47 for lifetime access!
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Perfect Soil Recipe Master Class: Learn how to create the perfect soil environment for thriving plants.
“How Flowers Made Our World: The Story of Nature’s Revolutionaries” by David George Haskell
“The Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch in Nature” by David George Haskell
“The Songs of Trees: Stories from Nature’s Great Connectors” by David George Haskell
“Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution’s Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction” by David George Haskell
“Thirteen Ways to Smell a Tree: Getting to know trees through the language of scent” by David George Haskell
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Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. I receive a commission every time you purchase a product through an Amazon affiliate link. Some product links in this guide are affiliate links. However, none of the prices of these resources have been increased to compensate us, and compensation is not an influencing factor on their inclusion here. The selection of all items featured in this post and podcast was based solely on merit and in no way influenced by any affiliate or financial incentive, or contractual relationship. At the time of this writing, Joe Lamp’l has professional relationships with the following companies who may have products included in this post and podcast: Milorganite, Soil3, Territorial Seed Company, Cool Springs Press / Quarto Group and Dramm. These companies are either Brand Partners of joegardener.com and/or advertise on our website. However, we receive no additional compensation from the sales or promotion of their product through this guide. The inclusion of any products mentioned within this post is entirely independent and exclusive of any relationship.
