
In our Time: The Evolution of Trees
The ideas, people and events that have shaped our world.
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.
With
Jenny McElwain
1711 Chair of Botany at Trinity College Dublin and Director of Trinity Botanic Gardens
Christopher Berry
Senior Lecturer in Earth and Environmental Sciences at Cardiff University
And
Bill Baker
Senior Researcher at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
On radio
Broadcast
- Sat 21 Nov 202612:06BBC World Service except East and Southern Africa & West and Central Africa
Podcast
![]()
In Our Time
Misha Glenny and guests discuss the ideas, people and events that have shaped our world.


