Original subtitles

David Attenborough: The taklamakan desert

in northern China.

A constantly shifting landscape of sand...

(Wind whooshes)

Temperatures that swing from minus 20...

(Sand rustles)

To more than 40 degrees centigrade...

And most critically,

almost entirely without rain.

Yet, here on the dunes...

A euphrates poplar tree.

And it's not alone.

Some of these trees have lived here for 1,000 years.

They have exceptionally long roots

with which to collect water.

And what is more,

those roots are connected to neighbouring trees

so that if one strikes water...

Others can share it.

In every desert across the planet,

plants have found ways to not only survive...

But flourish.

This is the gran desierto of Mexico and the United States.

These dunes may appear to be totally barren.

In fact, they are full of life.

In the sands beneath my feet,

there are seeds of many different kinds.

In fact, you could say that the dune itself

is one great seed bank,

and when it rains,

it bursts into life.

(Thunder crashes and rolls)

But rain may come only once a decade,

and even then, the long-awaited storm may be very brief.

So seeds must respond immediately.

This is sand verbena.

It can grow from a seed to a sweetly scented flowering plant

in just a few weeks.

Primroses and many other plants

soon join the race to flower before the sand dries.

Desert blooms like this, however, are rare.

This is the first year for 20 years.

The combination of vibrant colour and powerful scent

attracts migrating pollinators,

such as these painted lady butterflies,

which fly into the middle of what were only recently

barren dunes.

Everything is rushing to complete their lives

before the moisture has gone.

Such spectacular blooms

transform deserts all around the world...

From the atacama in South America...

To the dusty plains of Southern Africa.

Rain in deserts, however, never lasts long,

and all too soon, the flowers wither and die.

But not before they've produced the next generation...

The seeds that will now wait in the sand for the next rains.

(Sand rustles)

In the sonoran desert of North America,

the huge saguaro cacti

have a different strategy.

They store water in quantity...

And can live to a great age.

But in their early years,

they are extremely vulnerable.

This little saguaro cactus is about ten years old.

When they're really small and growing out in the open,

there's a real chance that they may shrivel up and die.

But this one has been lucky.

It's been growing in the shade of this mesquite tree,

and it's got a very good chance of surviving to maturity.

The young saguaro is protected by the mesquite's branches.

They halve the amount of scorching sunlight

reaching the cactus...

And so keep it cool.

And the mesquite's extremely long roots

draw up water,

bringing it within reach of the young saguaro.

So the mesquite is known as a "nurse plant",

and a very effective one it is, too.

In fact, this particular mesquite

has already nurtured seven young saguaros

over the past 30 years.

As a young cactus grows,

it needs the protection of its nurse plant

not only from the heat,

but from the other hazards of desert life.

Temperatures can drop to minus 10 degrees overnight...

And very occasionally,

it even snows.

If the water stored inside a young cactus should freeze,

the cactus will die.

But the nurse plant traps

a blanket of slightly warmer air around it,

just enough to keep it alive.

Eventually, saguaros outgrow their nurses,

but by that time, they are robust enough

to face the elements by themselves.

No matter how old a desert plant is,

water is always precious,

whether gathered from melting snow...

(Thunder crashes and rolls)

Or a shower of rain.

So cacti have developed extraordinary adaptations

that enable them to not only collect water...

But to retain it.

Instead of leaves, which would lose precious moisture

through evaporation,

they have spines.

Each spine has a tiny pad at its base

where the water is absorbed...

And then stored in the great swollen trunk.

A large saguaro can hold 5,000 litres of water...

And is able to do so

because it has another special adaptation.

(Slow creaking)

The ridges on its surface

are like the pleats on an accordion.

They allow the saguaro to change its shape.

After rain has fallen,

the pleats expand,

and the saguaro fills up its water tank.

In the dry times, it uses its water

to grow, produce flowers,

and, eventually, seeds.

Fully loaded with thousands of litres of water,

this saguaro won't need to drink a single drop

for another year.

But such valuable stores of water attract thieves.

Now the spines' function changes from collecting...

To guarding.

The spines of some species are a quarter of a metre long.

Others are needle-like barbs

that grow in clusters,

and easily break off in the skin of any animal

that touches them.

But perhaps the most vicious cacti

belong to a group called the chollas.

This is called a Teddy bear cholla

because of the thick coating of spines on it.

But don't be deceived by the name.

There is nothing cuddly about this particular Teddy bear.

In fact, it's the most dangerous plant in the desert,

and I wouldn't dream of putting my hand anywhere near it

without proper protection.

Brush against it...

This can happen. Ow!

This can happen. Even with this glove on,

one of them has just gone through, I can feel it.

It's quite painful.

Look closely at the spine

and you can see very clearly why they're so dangerous.

Each is like a splinter of glass,

sharp enough to Pierce flesh.

And they're covered with backward-pointing barbs.

So getting them out, even with a pair of pliers,

is quite hard.

This is not pleasant at all.

They won't come off without...

Oh, look at that.

It's hard to imagine a more aggressive defence than this.

And it makes both the plant and its buds

virtually in vulnerable.

Most animals know to keep clear.

(Sniffs)

Cholla buds grow like tiny barrels

from the top of the adult plant and then drop off.

(Barks)

If the young cholla put down roots here,

it would compete with its parent for water.

(Barking)

Night falls...

And this one is on the move.

A pack rat.

She knows how to deal with a cholla.

She avoids the spines by gripping it

at the place where it broke off from its parent.

And she works fast.

There are pack rat hunters here.

She uses the cholla to build a spiny wall around her nest.

The flesh of the cholla supplies her with water...

And the severed spines further reinforce the defences.

This cholla bud...

Might be next.

But one accidental nudge...

And it escapes.

(Spines crackle)

The bud starts to put down roots...

So the cholla, thanks to the pack rats,

finds new territory...

And sets about claiming it.

- (Birdsong) - (Insects buzzing)

Few plants deal with the problems of desert living

better than cacti.

There are almost 2,000 different species of them.

They're spread across the deserts of the American west,

from Arizona all the way to Mexico and beyond.

In South America,

the andes catch virtually all the rain-carrying clouds

that blow in from the pacific...

And that has created to the east of them

the world's driest desert -

the atacama.

In the desert world,

water thieves can come in many forms,

to exploit even the smallest chink in a plant's defence.

One of the strangest travels within the gut

of a fruit-eating mockingbird.

(Burbling call)

These are the seeds...

Of tristerix,

a kind of mistletoe.

Their goal is the water inside this hedgehog cactus.

Using the spines as anchors,

the seeds start to germinate.

Each produces a long probe

with which to try and locate the cactus's skin.

For most, that's a stretch too far

and they perish.

But for this one,

the cactus's surface is within reach.

It clamps onto it with a special sucker...

And then waits for darkness.

At night, the cactus opens its pores

in order to respire.

Oxygen goes out,

carbon dioxide goes in.

And so does tristerix,

Once within,

its tissues spread throughout the body of the cactus,

sustained by the precious store of water that they find there.

Then, a year later,

it breaks through the cactus's skin...

And bursts into flower.

Hummingbirds come to drink their nectar

and pollinate them as they do so.

And then, to complete the cycle,

tristerix produces hundreds of white eye-catching seeds,

ready to be carried away by a bird

to invade another cactus.

The karoo desert in Southern Africa.

And although it may look bare,

its rocky ground contains an unrivalled variety of plants

that, one way or another, store water in their tissues.

They belong to many different families,

but as a group, they're known as succulents.

Some are small and low

and barely distinguishable from their surroundings.

These look like little pebbles.

They resemble them so closely

that animals which might be only too glad

to steal their water just pass them by.

When rain does fall, they absorb it

and quickly expand.

But even this doesn't spoil their disguise.

They just look like larger pebbles.

Nor are they green.

The cells on their top surface are transparent

and allow sunlight to pass through.

Deep within, and out of sight,

are the green cells where photosynthesis occurs -

the process which uses this light

to make food for the plant.

When the time comes to reproduce, however,

the stone plant abandons its disguise.

And now it blooms.

The flowers open and close every 24 hours.

So, for a few dangerous days,

the plant advertises for pollinators,

before returning to life as a pebble.

(Antlers clatter)

Some desert plants have developed a very different way

of attracting pollinators.

This is stapelia.

It produces what is perhaps the desert's strangest disguise.

It uses water stored in its stems

to grow buds the size of tennis balls.

(Creaking)

The flower, once opened,

is called a desert starfish.

Instead of releasing millions of loose pollen grains,

as most flowers do,

the desert starfish produces them packed in five tiny sacs.

But if its strategy is successful,

just one of them will produce hundreds of seeds.

And this depends on deception.

The flower appears to have hair...

Wrinkly skin...

And it produces a stench

like the carcass of a dead animal.

(Sniffs)

(Flies buzz)

And when a carrion fly investigates...

The flower clamps a tiny sac of pollen to its proboscis.

It's not easy to feed with such encumbered mouth parts.

But try as it might, the fly can't get rid of it.

(Leaves creak)

And it's still there when the fly leaves

to try and feed from another bogus cactus.

(Fly buzzes)

This time, however, when its clamped-up proboscis

slots into the flower, the pollen sac is released.

With pollination complete,

the fly is no longer needed.

And just as well!

Some deserts can be so dry

that plants must find techniques of surviving

for long periods without any water whatsoever.

One of them is to grow extremely slowly,

and few plants grow more slowly than this one -

the creosote bush.

It is inactive for most of its life

and only wakes up and grows for a brief period...

If and when there is a fall of rain.

I've seen evidence of this grow-slow strategy

for myself.

40 years ago,

I came here to California's mojave desert

to visit one particular plant.

An individual creosote bush

tends to spread not by setting seeds

and producing a new generation,

but by sending out new stems around its base.

This plant started growing

between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago.

That was in 1982.

Since then, careful measurement has shown

that it has increased its size by less than one inch.

Its ability to endure is truly extraordinary.

(Birdsong)

So efficient is creosote

at collecting what little rain falls here

that few other plants can compete with it.

As a result, over the last 12,000 years,

it's come to completely dominate this landscape.

The chihuahuan desert in north Mexico.

Here, one particular plant

plays the waiting game so well

that it spends much of its life looking dead

and certainly not worth eating.

And it can survive like this for a decade.

This is the resurrection plant.

It's a kind of moss.

It barely has roots

and it certainly can't store much water.

But it can travel.

(Wind blows)

After a particularly long drought...

It breaks away from its roots...

And becomes...

A tumbleweed.

Blowing across the desert, it can travel a mile in a week.

With luck, it may find water.

(Thunder rolls)

Just a shower of rain can bring it back to life.

As its fronds soak up the water, they unfurl.

In its protected centre, it still has green cells,

which absorb both the water and sunlight,

and rapidly produce the food it needs to resume its growth.

It will grow for just as long as there is moisture.

(Leaves crackle)

But when that disappears...

It closes up once more

and resumes its travels.

Here in the canyon lands of Utah

lives a plant that has developed

a finely balanced relationship

with the animals with which it shares this dramatic desert.

Rain does occasionally fall here

and turns dust into mud.

(Cracking)

But that doesn't last long.

A brief window of opportunity opens.

Seeds that have been buried for years

may now be exposed to light...

And come to life.

This is coyote tobacco.

In just a few weeks, it grows a metre tall

and produces dozens of flowers.

The night air becomes heavy with their fragrance.

Soon, they attract hawk moths,

which sip their nectar,

and in doing so, pollinate them.

But the moths also lay their eggs on them.

Soon, their caterpillars have hatched

and are munching the leaves.

Their nibbles expose the plant's sap

to the drying air.

But the tobacco plant has a defence.

The leaves under attack produce nicotine.

This chemical sedates the caterpillars

and slows them down.

And what is more, it makes them give off a particular scent...

One that summons others to come to the plant's aid.

Big-eyed bugs -

miniature assassins only 2mm long.

And whiptail lizards.

Big or small, they make a meal of the caterpillars.

It's certainly effective.

But there's more to this strategy than meets the eye.

When the leaf of a tobacco plant

is attacked by a caterpillar,

all the rest of the leaves prepare to defend themselves.

But how does this leaf know that

that leaf there is under attack?

Well, scientists here in the United States

have specially genetically modified these tobacco plants

so that under special lighting conditions,

this microscope can show us exactly what is going on.

I'm going to attack one of the leaves of this plant

with these tweezers, which, to the plant,

will seem as if it's being nibbled by a caterpillar.

Signals are being transmitted along the veins

that link the leaf to the rest of the plant.

It's rather like a very simple nervous system.

From that initial injury, the whole of this little plant

is aware that something had happened.

This signal warns each leaf of the danger...

So that it is ready to produce nicotine

the moment it's attacked.

With this defence at the ready, the tobacco plant

can continue to grow until, eventually, it produces seeds.

It's particularly important in deserts

for seeds to be distributed as widely as possible

so that some will have a chance of reaching moisture.

And deserts have an excellent agent to help them do that.

(Wind blows)

The wind.

Many seeds have adaptations to help them exploit it.

They have shells to protect the seeds within

from abrasion...

Or wings to help them catch the air.

As the temperature rises throughout the day,

desert winds increase in strength.

Here in Arizona, the land is regularly swept by

what is known as a haboob.

It's a giant sandstorm,

but also, in effect, a seed storm.

Countless millions of them are swept up into the air.

Some seeds can travel

thousands of miles on the wind...

(Thunder cracks)

So that plants may eventually reach

even the most isolated desert.

(Thunder rolls)

Some have landed on an island

in the middle of the world's largest salt flat, in Bolivia.

(Birds call)

In the galapagos,

they sprout on fields of recently erupted lava.

(Fire crackles)

They've even reached

one of the most inhospitable of all sites -

the tiny island of San Pedro martir,

a scorched, lonely rock off the coast of Mexico.

This is the home of the giant cardon,

a species of huge cactus that can weigh up to 12 tonnes.

They're able to thrive here

because of an extraordinary partnership...

With brown and blue-footed boobies.

The cardons here can become so broad

that they provide cooling shade for nesting birds.

As the booby chicks get older, they repay the cardons...

With their droppings.

Guano.

The digested remains of vast shoals of fish.

This guano is of such strength and quantity

that most plants would be poisoned by it.

These cardons, however, have evolved the ability to tolerate

the toxins in the guano and digest the nutrients.

As a result, the cacti now grow in a dense forest

over a million strong.

But such relationships are very finely balanced

and can only too easily tip into catastrophe...

As is now happening in northern Zimbabwe.

For six months of the year,

the Savannah here is kept lush and green by daily rains.

(Animals call)

But when the rainy season is over,

it becomes as dry as any desert.

So to survive here, trees must be able to tolerate

both conditions.

And these giants are adapted to do just that.

They are baobabs.

This one might be over a thousand years old.

It's survived here in part thanks to

its ability to store thousands of litres of water

within the spongy wood of its trunk.

But its battered surface

is evidence of a very finely balanced relationship.

These huge trees are a focus for animals of all kinds.

(Rumbling and snorting)

And they're particularly important for elephants.

In the wet season, they eat the baobabs' fruit

and disperse the seeds in their dung.

Now, as the dry season begins...

(Snorts)

They migrate to distant watering holes.

The baobabs have damp inner wood...

And the elephants use it

to quench their thirst on the journey.

(Elephant trumpets)

(Low rumbling)

This relationship can only work because baobabs

have a remarkable ability to heal themselves.

Between each damaging attack,

they expand their spongy wood and grow new skin.

And they've done this time and time again,

over centuries.

Today, however, it's harder for the baobabs to recover,

as dry seasons become longer and drier

due to climate change.

Not only that, but the elephants are forced

to take ever more wood from the trees in order to survive.

In some parts of Africa, many of the largest

and oldest baobabs have fallen in the last decade.

The loss of a vital species like the baobab

strikes a blow at all life in the desert.

In these hostile lands, few living organisms can survive

without help from others.

You can find an extraordinary illustration of this

in Arizona's saguaro country.

If you wander off the beaten track here,

you may be lucky enough to find one of these.

It might look like an old boot,

but in fact, it's part of a saguaro cactus.

Almost every saguaro has one.

There's one up there.

(Birds call)

It has been produced, indirectly, by woodpeckers,

which regularly dig homes for themselves

in the bloated trunks of the saguaros.

In the next six months,

the cactus heals the wound,

and so creates a safe, cool and watertight nest hole.

It's tough lining will persist for years,

even after the cactus itself has died and rotted away.

A single saguaro may hold

several of these extraordinary homes.

So over its lifetime,

it may provide accommodation

for some 3,000 chicks of several different species.

(Bird squawks)

But in the long term, the saguaro benefits,

as their lodgers repay the cactus

by pollinating its flowers...

And dispersing its seeds.

It's relationships like these that enable life to flourish

in some of the world's harshest landscapes.

Over millions of years,

plants have become superbly adapted

to hostile desert conditions.

But it's a very finely balanced existence,

and one that makes them uniquely vulnerable.

However, our growing understanding

of the complex ways by which desert animals and plants

rely on one another is now helping us to understand

how best we can protect them.

90 years ago, a photograph was taken from this very spot

that shows a population of saguaro cactus

that was very different from what it is today.

In the last 50 years,

the population of saguaros here has greatly diminished -

not because of a direct assault on the cactus,

but because many of the shade-giving nurse trees

were harvested for firewood,

leaving young saguaro to die in the sun.

Now that this relationship is understood

and the nurse trees are protected,

there are already signs

that the saguaro are recovering.

Wherever there's a desert,

plants have evolved to meet its challenge.

But everywhere, they need our help.

As we understand more about them

and their intimate and complex relationships...

We will be better able to protect them,

and all life, in these beautiful

but increasingly fragile worlds.

The most remote shoot for the deserts team

is to the island of San Pedro martir

in the sea of Cortez, Mexico.

They are to film the giant cacti

that have found a unique way to thrive here.

It takes 48 hours to travel the 260 miles...

Over unpleasantly choppy seas.

It's not made some of us feel very well.

I think one of us is quite seasick.

There is nothing but big blue out there,

and the island is somewhere in that direction.

Can't see it yet.

As they draw close to the island,

there's a spectacular reminder

of how rich life in the sea is here.

Oh, look in front of us, look at that for a pod!

Oh, they're everywhere.

Show us the way!

(Laughs)

Meeting them here is desert scientist Ben Wilder.

It's through his research that the team first heard about

the island's peculiar residents.

I'll never forget the first time I came to

actually exactly where we're standing right now.

It was April of 2006, and saw this view,

and it both settled in my heart and captivated my mind.

And so that started a process of trying to understand,

you know, what can produce this?

The secret is in the relationship between the cactus

and a type of seabird called a booby.

All the boobies that we need to film

are right up there at the top of the island,

so it's going to be a bit of a scramble.

The crew soon discover how harsh the conditions are here.

I'm pretty tired. It's pretty hot.

But it's a great view.

There's very few places on earth where you're going to see

this many cactus. I mean, it's absolutely amazing.

I would say this is the only place

- you're going to see this. - Well, there you go, then.

Ben's research is uncovering the ingenious ways

the cacti have adapted to the conditions here.

The waters just offshore here are some of the most productive

marine waters in the world,

and so it's kind of an ideal habitat for seabirds to roost.

But when they do so, they deposit tonnes of guano,

and so those nutrients,

really high in nitrogen and phosphorus,

actually are toxic to most plant species.

The cardons thrive because they're uniquely able

to process the guano

and extract what they need to fuel their growth.

One of the first shots the crew need to get

is of the boobies nesting under the cacti.

The lack of predators

means the birds aren't afraid of people.

It should make filming them up close a bit easier.

That's the theory.

Oli: So we've positioned this camera here to try and get

a good perspective on the chick on the nest.

It's taken quite a liking to our camera.

Let's hope he doesn't break it.

Bull's-eye.

It's pooed right on the front of the lens.

It's kind of a shot we need, but, unfortunately,

my camera wasn't rolling at the time it did it,

so now I've just got a dirty lens.

After a thorough lens clean,

oli eventually gets the shots

to reveal the extraordinary relationship

between bird and plant.

But it's not just the bird guano that influence

how the cardons grow.

They're way shorter, they're dwarfed here.

Throughout the rest of their range

they usually get upwards of 50, 60 feet.

But here, on average, they're 20, 24 feet in height.

They stop growing up and they grow out.

Ben's research suggests that they go wide here

as an adaptation to the violent winds.

Too tall, and they'd blow over.

A gusting wind isn't helping the drone crew, either.

We really need it to calm down a bit,

otherwise it's going to be impossible.

(Drone whirs)

On the sonoran mainland, where the cardon is also found,

you have on average between 50 to 150 plants per hectare.

Here, on this island, you have over 2,500 plants per hectare.

A lull in the wind, and the team get a chance to reveal

the remarkably density of the cacti -

almost 20 times greater than anywhere else.

It appears that, here, they're doing very well.

But even this island

isn't isolated from the effects of a changing planet.

Every cactus you see there,

its body is filled with nutrients from the sea.

Given that we know that the cardons

are linked to the ocean, what happens in the oceans

affects what happens to the cardon.

So a concern we have right now

is that there's a lot of overfishing,

and we know there are less seabirds here

than there were 20 years ago,

and we have reason to believe that

that will ripple and affect

the nutrients that fuel the cardons as well.

This finely balanced relationship is at risk,

and knowing that makes leaving the island

particularly thought-provoking for the crew.

The cardons look beautiful. I've never seen

so many cactus in my life. It's absolutely amazing.

I'm just hoping that when we leave this place,

it stays as it is,

and things don't affect it that are negative.

It's an absolutely wonderful thing, and...

Yeah, and I don't want to go. I want to stay.

This remote cactus forest is a reminder

of the adaptability of plants,

that enables them to establish green worlds

almost anywhere on earth.