Flower Power

Big Picture Science

Science, Technology

4.6 • 986 Ratings

🗓️ 13 March 2023

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Before everything could come up roses, there had to be a primordial flower – the mother, and father, of all flowers. Now scientists are on the hunt for it. The eFlower project aims to explain the sudden appearance of flowering plants in the fossil record, what Darwin called an “abominable mystery.” Meanwhile, ancient flowers encased in amber or preserved in tar are providing clues about how ecosystems might respond to changing climates. And, although it was honed by evolution for billions of years, can we make photosynthesis more efficient and help forestall a global food crisis? Guests: Eva-Maria Sadowski - Post doctoral paleobotanist at the Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin Regan Dunn - Paleobotanist and assistant Curator at the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum Royal Krieger - Rosarian and volunteer at the Morcom Rose Garden, Oakland, California Ruby Stephens - Plant ecology PhD candidate at Macquarie University in Australia, and member of the eFlower Project Stephen Long - Professor of Plant Science, University of Illinois Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science. You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support! Please take our listener survey! Help us get to know you and enter to win a $500 Amazon gift card! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:36.0	The world is constantly changing and transforming.
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0:49.6	sense of what's happening in the world. Listen to What's New with Wired wherever you get your podcasts.
0:55.8	That's What's New with Wired, wherever you get your podcasts. As you check out the beauty of some long stem roses or admire a bouquet of daffodils,
1:15.2	consider that flowers, despite their physical delicacy, are also robust.
1:20.4	Flowers are reproductive innovators. They evolved effective strategies to disperse seeds, often recruiting other organisms to help.
1:28.0	Now scientists want to identify the first bloom, that is the father and mother of all flowers.
1:35.0	The physical first flower is like a holy grail and it's been a bit of a holy grail since Darwin.
1:41.0	Darwin talked about the abominable mystery of flowering plants because they do just kind of appear in the
1:46.1	fossil record. But why did flowers emerge? After all, for many millions of years, plants were doing just fine, reproducing without them.
1:55.0	Also, can we understand how plant life might adapt to our changing climate by studying its past?
2:01.0	This is Big Picture Science from the SETI Institute and I'm Seth Shostak.
	...

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