Hi, it's Ira Flato, and you're listening to Science Friday.

We're waiting impatiently for signs of spring beneath the melting snow.

I mean, I'm looking for you crocuses and daffodils.

These colorful blossoms would surely brighten all of our moods.

But my next guest argues that flowers are not just beautiful.

They are critical to the diversity of life as we know it and to food and agriculture.

Let's learn all about that with Dr. David, George Haskell,

biologist and author of How Flowers Made Our World, the story of nature's

revolutionaries. He's based in Atlanta, Georgia. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you, Ira. It's a delight

to be with you to chat about the world-changing power of flowers. One of my favorite topics,

because I grow a lot of them, so let's get right into this because when I think about the evolution of life on Earth, flowers are not typically front and center in my mind. So tell me what we have been getting wrong all these years.

Yes, we think of Earth's evolution often. We're thinking about Tyrannosaurus and animals and maybe microbial revolutions billions

of years ago.

And I think flowers belong in that pantheon of revolutionaries because they were late arrivals

on planet Earth.

They evolved maybe 130 million years ago.

After they evolved, they swiftly took

over most of the habitats on the planet and are the foundation of most rainforests, prairies,

seagrass meadows, mangroves, all over the world now. So they truly are revolutionaries.

They opened opportunities for other animals and created most of the most productive ecosystems on the planet.

So we think of them as ephemeral and merely ornamental, but in fact, flowers are extraordinarily powerful world changes.

Let's talk about that because I'm wondering, does the fact that flowers are pretty and they smell

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