DESERT WORLDS
What is the theme of this episode?
How plants live in the driest, harshest and most extreme landscapes on Earth, where survival means getting water and then protecting it. We also reveal the remarkable adaptations of desert plants, and how they depend on their relationships with other plants and animals.
What filming approaches do you use?
The thing about desert plants is that many grow much slower than those in other environments, and even subtle changes in the landscape can take many decades to see. So we had to take a different approach to the rest of the series – Sir David timetravelled. He is the only person that can do that, because he’s the only person that’s been to all of these places over all these years. We took him to a creosote bush in the Mojave Desert, southern USA. It looks like a boring shrub, but is in fact one of oldest organisms on the planet – it’s 12,000 years old. Sir David
