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<\/a><\/div>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
In 1973, sunflowers grew in my father’s vegetable garden.
\nThey appeared to sprout spontaneously in a few rows he’d lent to new
\nCalifornia neighbors that year. At the moment, just six years old, these
\ngarish plants first set me off. Such odd and colorful flowers seemed out of
\nplace amid the respectable beans, peppers, spinach, and other vegetables that
\nwe’ve all grown. Yet eventually, sunflowers’ beauty won me over. Their fiery
\nhalos relieved the lush monotonous garden dominated by late summer. I marveled
\nat birds clinging to shaggy, gold balls, wings fluttering, seed plundering.
\nThat summer, Sunflowers identified flowers for me and changed my outlook.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Flowers have a way to do so. They started transforming the
\nway the planet looked nearly as soon as they arrived on Earth about 130 million
\nyears ago, during the Cretaceous period. That’s comparatively recent in
\ngeological time: if all Earth’s past were squeezed into an hour, just the last
\n90 seconds would be flowering plants. But once they took firm root about 100
\nmillion years ago, they soon diversified into an abundance of varieties that
\nformed much of modern-day flowering plant families.<\/p>\n
Today flowering plant species outnumber twenty to one of
\nferns and cone-bearing trees or conifers that thrived 200 million years before
\nthe first bloom appeared. As a food source, flowering plants provide the
\nnourishment essential to our life to us and the rest of the animal world. In
\nWalter Judd’s words, a botanist at Florida University, if not for flowering
\nplants, we humans wouldn’t be here.<\/p>\n
From oaks and palms to wildflowers and water lilies, to
\nmiles of cornfields and citrus orchards to the garden of my aunt, flowering
\nplants have come to dominate the worlds of botany and agriculture. They often
\nrule over an ethereal world pursued by writers, poets, and ordinary people
\nfinding inspiration, warmth, or the basic joy of seeing a flower.<\/p>\n
Before flowering plants emerged, says Dale Russell, a
\npaleontologist with North Carolina State University and the State Museum of
\nNatural Sciences, the world was like a Japanese garden: populated by birds,
\ntortoises, and dragonflies. The planet looked like an English garden after flowering
\nplants, full of color and abundance, visited by butterflies and honeybees.
\nFlowers of all sizes flourished amid the greenery.<\/p>\n
The seismic transition marks one of the planet’s biggest
\nmoments in human history. What made flowering plants rule the world’s flora so
\nfast? What’s been their big innovation?<\/p>\n
Botanists call angiosperms from the Greek terms for vessel and seed. Unlike conifers in open cones, angiosperms enclose their seeds
\nin berries. Each fruit contains one or more carpels, hollow chambers that cover
\nthe seeds. Break a tomato in half, for example, and find carpels. These
\nmechanisms are the distinguishing characteristic of all angiosperms and a key
\nto the success of this vast plant community, which numbers 235,000 species.<\/p>\n
Only when did the first flowering plants emerge? Charles
\nDarwin pondered the question, and paleobotanists are still finding answers.
\nDiscoveries of fossilized flowers in Asia, Australia, Europe, and North
\nAmerica provided valuable hints in the 1990s. Simultaneously, the genetics
\nfield introduced a whole new range of methods to scan. Modern paleobotany has
\nexperienced a surge, not unlike the Cretaceous flower eruption itself.<\/p>\n
Old-style fossil hunters now compare observations with
\nshovels and microscopes using genetic analysis to map current plant families
\nback to their origins. These two researchers groups don’t often arrive at the
\nsame birthplace, but both camps agree on why the pursuit is significant.<\/p>\n
If we have a clear description of a flowering plant’s
\nnature, says Walter Judd, so we will know information about its form and
\nfunction that will help us address any questions: with what species can it be
\ncrossed? What pollinators are effective? This, he claims, moves us towards
\nincreasingly sensitive and efficient farming methods, as well as a clearer
\nunderstanding of the broader evolutionary process.<\/p>\n
In recent years, Elizabeth Zimmer, a molecular biologist
\nwith the Smithsonian Institution, rethought the process. Zimmer tried to decode
\nthe genealogy of flowering plants by analyzing today’s species’ DNA. Her work
\nintensified in the late 1990s during Deep Green, a federally funded project,
\ndesigned to promote collaboration among scientists researching plant evolution.<\/p>\n
In their pooled results, Zimmer and her colleagues started
\nsearching for classes of plants with similar inherited characteristics, aiming
\nfinally to find a common ancestor for all flowering plants. Amborellaceae, a
\ngenus that comprises only one recognized member, Amborella trichopoda, is the
\nlongest living lineage, stretching back at least 130 million years. Sometimes
\ndescribed as a living fossil, this small woody plant grows only in New
\nCaledonia, an island known by botanists for its primeval flora.<\/p>\n
But we don’t have a 130 million-year-old Amborella, so we
\ncan only imagine if it looks like the range of today. We have fossils from
\nvarious extinct tropical species, the oldest found in 130 million-year-old
\nsediments. These fossils send us our first visible impressions of what looked
\nlike early flowers, indicating they were small and unadorned, without petals.
\nThese no-frill flowers contradict certain conceptions of what constitutes a
\nflower.<\/p>\n
To see what the first primitive angiosperm would look like,
\nI flew to England and met paleobotanist Chris Hill, formerly at London’s
\nNatural History Museum. Hill drove me south of London through rolling fields to
\nSmokejacks Brickworks. Smokejacks is a hundred-foot-deep (30-meter-deep) crater
\nin the earth, as wide as many football fields, providing much more than brick
\nraw material. The rust-colored clays contained thousands of fossils from 130
\nmillion years ago. We marched down the canyon, got down on our hands and knees,
\nand started digging.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Soon Hill raised some mudstone. He explained it to me,
\npointing to an illustration of a tiny stem ending in a primitive flower. The
\nfossil resembled a single broccoli-picked sprout. The first flower in the world?
\nMore like a flower concept said Hill, who discovered his original fossil in
\nthe early 1990s. He formally called it Bevhalstia Abuja, terms paved from his
\nclosest colleagues’ names.<\/p>\n
Via my glass, the Bevhalstia fossil looked tiny and straggly,
\nan unremarkable plant I could see emerging in the water at the edge of a pond
\nwhere Hill claims it has grown.<\/p>\n
Here’s why I think it’s a wild flowering herb, Hill said. Bevhalstia
\nis distinct and unassigned to any existing plant family. So we start by
\ncomparing it to what we know. Any modern aquatic plants’ stems follow the same
\nbranching patterns as Bevhalstia and grow tiny flower buds at certain branch
\nends. Bevhalstia also bears a striking similarity to a fossil described by
\npaleobotanists Leo Hickey and Dave Taylor in 1990. The fossil, Australia’s
\ndiminutive 120 million-year-old herb, grew leaves that are neither fernlike
\nnor needlelike. Instead, they are inlaid with veins like typical flowering
\nplant stems.<\/p>\n
More specifically, the specimen of Hickey and Taylor
\ncontains fossilized fruits that once contained seeds, which Hill hopes to find
\nin Bevhalstia. Both plants lack established petals. Both are more common than
\nthe magnolia, recently disassembled as the oldest tree, though still considered
\nan ancient legacy. And both, along with a recent discovery from China called
\nArchaefructus, backed the theory that the very first flowering plants were
\nplain and unobtrusive.<\/p>\n
As other explorers, early angiosperms were overlooked. In a
\nlandscape dominated by conifers and ferns, these botanical pioneers succeeded
\nin obtaining a toehold in places of natural disruption, such as floodplains and
\nvolcanic zones, adapting rapidly to new conditions. Fossil data leads some
\nbotanists to conclude the first flowering plants were herbaceous, suggesting no
\nwoody sections grew. (New genetic analysis reveals, however, that most ancient
\nangiosperm lines included both herbaceous and woody plants.) Unlike trees that
\ntake years to mature and bear seed, herbaceous angiosperms survive, reproduce, and die in brief life cycles. This helps them to easily seed new land and maybe
\nencourage them to grow quicker than their rivals, advantages that could have
\nimproved their diversity.<\/p>\n
Although this so-called herbaceous habit may have given them
\nsuperiority over slow-growing woody plants, the trump card of angiosperms was
\nthe flower. A flower is essentially an angiosperm’s reproduction system. Both
\nflowers are male and female. Reproduction starts as a flower sheds microscopic
\ngenetic material pollen into the air. These grains finally come to rest on
\nanother flower’s stigma, a tiny pollen receptor. In most instances, the stigma
\nsits atop a stalk-like structure called a style protruding from a flower’s
\nmiddle. The pollen kernel, moisturized, activates proteins that chemically
\ndetermine whether the new plant is genetically compatible. If so, the pollen
\ngrain will germinate and develop a tube down the style and ovary into the ovule
\nwhere fertilization occurs and seed starts to form.<\/p>\n
Wind casting pollen is a hit-or-miss reproductive method.
\nWhile wind pollination suffices for many plant species, direct insect
\ndistribution is much more effective. Undoubtedly, insects started to visit and
\npollinate angiosperms until new plants appeared on Earth around 130 million
\nyears ago. But it will be another 30 to 40 million years before flowering
\nplants attracted insect pollinators’ interest by flaunting dazzling petals.<\/p>\n
Petals have formed between 90 and 100 million years ago,
\nsaid Else Marie Friis, head of paleobotany at the Swedish Natural History
\nMuseum outside Stockholm. And then, very, very little.<\/p>\n
A knowledgeable woman with short brown hair and intense
\neyes, Friis maintains what many experts say is the most complete collection of
\nfossils found in one location. The delicate flowers survived death, strangely
\nenough, due to the heat of long-ago forest fires that burned them into
\ncharcoal.<\/p>\n
Friis gave me an 80-million-year-old fossil flower no larger
\nthan at the end of this section. Coated in pure gold for optimum detail under
\nan electron microscope, it barely seemed a flower. Many researchers ignored
\nthese small, simple flowers, she said, because without the microscope you can’t
\nunderstand their variety.<\/p>\n
So we squatted through her strong magnifier and walked
\nfiguratively through a cretaceous world of small, colourful angiosperms. Friis’
\nfossilized flowers multiplied hundreds or thousands of times, resemble
\nwrinkled onion bulbs or radishes. Many have clamped their tiny petals, sealing
\ncarpels within. Others reach full maturity wide open. Dense bunches of pollen
\ngrains cling in gnarled clumps.<\/p>\n
Between 70 and 100 million years ago, the number of
\nflowering plant species on Earth erupted, a phenomenon botanists call it the
\ngreat radiation. The spark igniting the eruption, Friis said, was the petal.<\/p>\n
Petals provided more variety. This is now commonly known,
\nFriis said. Once ignored angiosperms were standouts in the field, luring insect
\npollinators like never before. Reproduction actually began.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Insect-flowering activity influenced the growth of both
\nspecies, a phenomenon called coevolution. In time, flowers developed arresting
\npatterns, seducing fragrances, and distinctive petals to provide insect
\npollinators with landing pads. Nutritious fluid flowers have nectar as a form
\nof trade product in return for pollen dispersal in the insect benefit package.
\nBees, butterflies, and wasps’ ancestors became dependent on nectar, and thus
\nbecome agents of pollen delivery, unwittingly bearing grains hitched on their
\nbodies to tiny hairs. These insects may capture and transfer pollen to new
\nflowers with each visit, enhancing fertilization chances.<\/p>\n
Insects were not the only compelled animals to help move
\nflowering plants to any corner of Earth. Dinosaurs, the world’s first movers
\nand shakers, bulldozed into ancient trees, unintentionally destroying fertile
\nangiosperm land. They also sowed seeds around land through their digestive
\ntracts.<\/p>\n
By the time the first flowering plant emerged, plant-eating
\ndinosaurs had been around for a million years, feeding on a diet of ferns,
\nconifers, and other primordial plants throughout. Dinosaurs lasted for 65
\nmillion years and some scientists believe the giant reptiles had plenty of
\ntime to adapt to a new diet that included angiosperms.<\/p>\n
Just before dinosaurs died, I believe lots of them were
\nchowing down on flowering plants, says Kirk Johnson of Nature & Science
\nMuseum Denver. Johnson has discovered several fossils aged 60 to 70 million
\nfrom locations throughout the Rocky Mountain region. He deduces from them that
\nhadrosaurs or duck-billed dinosaurs lived on large angiosperm leaves that had
\nformed in a warm climatic change just before the Cretaceous period ended.
\nReferring to sediments that only predate dinosaur extinction, he said, I just
\nfind a few hundred samples of non-flowering plants there, but I collected
\n35,000 angiosperm specimens. No way the dinosaurs ate these things.<\/p>\n
Early angiosperms were low-growing, which better matched
\nsome dinosaurs than others. Brachiosaurs had long necks like giraffes, so they
\nwere poorly equipped to eat new vegetation, says Richard Cifelli, University of
\nOklahoma paleontologist. However, ceratopsians and duck-billed dinosaurs were
\ntrue mowing devices. Behind those mowers, angiosperms adapted for freshly
\ncutting ground and spreading.<\/p>\n
Dinosaurs abruptly died around 65 million years ago, and
\nanother group of species took their place \u2014 the mammals, which greatly
\nbenefited from the variety of angiosperm foods, including seeds, nuts, and
\nmany vegetables. Flowering seeds, in particular, benefited from mammals’ seed
\ndispersal.<\/p>\n
Two kingdoms made a handshake, says David Dilcher, a
\npaleobotanist with Natural History Museum of Florida. I’ll feed you and take my
\ngenetic material out.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/o:p><\/p>\nEventually, mankind changed, and the two realms made another
\nhandshake. Angiosperms fulfilled our need for food by cultivation. In turn, we
\ntook certain species like corn and rice and gave them unprecedented success,
\ncultivating them in vast fields, deliberately pollinating them, gusto consuming
\nthem. Virtually all non-meat food we consume begins as a flowering plant, while
\nthe foods, milk, and eggs we consume come from grain-fattened animals \u2014
\nflowers. And wearing cotton is angiosperm.<\/p>\n
And aesthetically, angiosperms protect and enrich our lives.
\nOn Valentine’s Day, we’ve come to admire them for their beauty, their scents,
\ntheir companionship in a vase, a plant. Some flowers speak an ancient language
\nof short phrases. For these more sparkling players \u2014 orchids, roses, lilies \u2014
\nthe universe grows smaller, crisscrossed every day by jet-setting flowers in
\nthe cargo holds of commercial aircraft.<\/p>\n
We aim to supply flowers anywhere in the world within 24
\nhours of being picked, said Jan Lanning, a senior consultant with the Dutch
\nWholesale Commission, the world’s ornamental flowers turnstile. The company also
\nglobalized.<\/p>\n
On my way home from Friis’s Swedish school, I stopped in
\nthe Netherlands, the world’s largest exporter of cut flowers. I asked Lanning
\nto try to describe his chosen job. He leaned with a ready response.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/o:p><\/p>\nFlowers intrigued us as long as we lived. That’s an
\nemotional commodity. Living objects draw people. Smell, light, charm all in a
\nflower. He grinned at his desk’s fragrant lily design. Per Monday a florist
\nbrings this office fresh flowers. It’s the luxury required.<\/p>\n
Later that day, I spied a group of admirers crowded before a
\npainting in Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum. I went there and pressed in among
\nthem. Suddenly I saw Sunflowers, one of van Gogh’s most famous works. The
\nflowers hang out of a vase, muddy and disheveled. They took me to my barefoot
\nyouth at the edge of my dad’s garden on a wet summer evening alive with
\nfireflies and cicadas murmur.<\/p>\n
The audience went on, with Sunflowers left. My search came
\nto this surprising end, the first flower I can recall. Would van Gogh raise the
\nflower to an art form, or would van Gogh’s flower harness imagination
\nimmortalize itself in oils and brushstrokes? Flowering plants occupied more
\nthan land. They have profoundly rooted our minds and souls. We know we ‘re
\nwalking into their world like a museum, and they’ve been here long before we’ve
\ncome and maybe stay long after we’ve left.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 In 1973, sunflowers grew in my father’s vegetable garden. They appeared to sprout spontaneously in a few rows he’d lent to new California neighbors that year. At the moment, just six years old, these garish plants first set me off. Such odd and colorful flowers seemed out of place amid the respectable beans, peppers, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":329839,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1022,156021,14525,29723,5795,2379],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-329838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-big","tag-bloomhow","tag-changed","tag-flowering","tag-plants","tag-world"],"yoast_head":"\n
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They appeared to sprout spontaneously in a few rows he’d lent to new California neighbors that year. At the moment, just six years old, these garish plants first set me off. Such odd and colorful flowers seemed out of place amid the respectable beans, peppers, […]","og_url":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=329838","og_site_name":"Som2ny Network","article_published_time":"2025-12-03T23:40:03+00:00","og_image":[{"width":275,"height":145,"url":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/images.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"admin","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"admin","Est. reading time":"13 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=329838#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=329838"},"author":{"name":"admin","@id":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/#\/schema\/person\/b85e3c3dc0e1daea076524dc8810c371"},"headline":"The Big Bloom\u2014How Flowering Plants Changed the World","datePublished":"2025-12-03T23:40:03+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=329838"},"wordCount":2584,"commentCount":0,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=329838#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/images.jpg","keywords":["Big","BloomHow","Changed","Flowering","plants","World"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=329838#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=329838","url":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=329838","name":"The Big Bloom\u2014How Flowering Plants Changed the World - 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