The Evolution of Trees

4 Jun, 2026 580 Plants

Misha Glenny and guests discuss the earliest evidence we have of the existence of trees and how even plants we might have on windowsills or as vegetables in gardens can and do, in the right conditions, evolve into trees. Since their emergence around 400 million years ago after low lying plants started to develop stronger stems and grow taller and more upright, trees have transformed our planet, so creating ecosystems, altering the atmosphere and setting the stage for the world as we know it today.

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

Guests

  • Jenny McElwain No other episodes
    1711 Chair of Botany at Trinity College Dublin and Director of Trinity Botanic Gardens
  • Christopher Berry No other episodes
    Senior Lecturer in Earth and Environmental Sciences at Cardiff University
  • Bill Baker No other episodes
    Senior Researcher at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Reading list

  • The Emerald Planet: How Plants Changed Earth's History
    David Beerling (Oxford University Press, 2008) Google Books →
  • Palaeobotany: The Rise of the Earth's Early Forests
    C.M. Berry (Current Biology, 2019)
  • Lycopsid forests in the early Late Devonian paleoequatorial zone of Svalbard
    Christopher M. Berry and John E.A. Marshall (Geology, 2015)
  • Earth's earliest forest: fossilized trees and vegetation-induced sedimentary structures from the Middle Devonian (Eifelian) Hangman Sandstone Formation, Somerset and Devon, SW England
    N.S. Davies, W.J. McMahon and C.M. Berry (J. Geol. Soc., 2024)
  • Reconstruction and Growth of the Early Tree Calamophyton (Pseudosporochnales, Cladoxylopsida) Based on Exceptionally Complete Specimens from Lindlar, Germany (Mid-Devonian): Organic Connection of Calamophyton Branches and Duisbergia Trunks
    P. Geisen and C.M. Berry (International Journal of Plant Sciences, 2013)
  • Comparative and Evolutionary Genomics of Angiosperm Trees: Plant Genetics and Genomics
    A. Groover and Q. Cronk (eds) (Springer, 2017) Google Books →
  • Tropical Arctic: Lost Plants, Future Climates, and the Discovery of Ancient Greenland
    Jennifer McElwain, Marlene Hill Donnelly, and Ian Glasspool (University of Chicago Press, 2021) Google Books →
  • The Genius of Trees: How Trees Mastered the Elements and Shaped the World
    Harriet Rix (Vintage, 2026) Google Books →
  • Mid-Devonian Archaeopteris roots signal revolutionary change in earliest fossil forests
    W.E. Stein et al. (Current biology, 2020)
  • Surprisingly complex community discovered in the mid-Devonian fossil forest at Gilboa
    William E. Stein, Christopher Mark Berry, Linda VanAller Hernick and Frank Mannolini (Nature, 2012)
  • The Tree of Life: Solving Science's Greatest Puzzle
    Max Telford (John Murray, 2026) Google Books →
  • The Evolution of Plants
    K.J. Willis, J.C. McElwain (Oxford University Press, 2014) Google Books →
  • The Wollemi Pine: The Incredible Discovery of a Living Fossil from the Age of the Dinosaurs
    James Woodford (The Text Publishing Company, 2005) Google Books →
  • Phylogenomics and the rise of the angiosperms
    Alexandre R. Zuntini et al (Nature, 2024)

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Programme ID: m002x5jl

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002x5jl

Auto-category: 580.1 (Botany - General principles)