A few hundred million years ago, a fly landed on a plant it had never seen before. In the centre was something dusty. Then the fly took off, and landed on another such plant. The planet’s first flower had just been pollinated — and its descendants would go on to inherit the earth.
Now scientists have used genetic sleuthing to construct an image of that flower — to help us understand both plants and the insects that developed alongside them.
For most of the time that plants have existed, pollination relied on the elements. But this plant, which is at least 140 million years old, was able to enlist the services of insects, and so successful was that one development that we all probably owe our existence to it.
“These plants are the basis for all that we eat, and so much medicine,” said Hervé Sauquet from Université Paris-Sud. “This is an essential part of the puzzle to explain why we are here, but until now we have had no clear picture of how flowers evolved right at their very beginning.”
His research, published in the journal Nature Communications, involved data taken from almost 800 different species of flowering plants to trace the evolutionary tree and build up a picture of the flower. Professor Sauquet said: “There were ferns before, and a number of other seed plants. But none producing flowers.
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“The flower is a brilliant invention. It worked really well once it evolved.” Professor Sauquet also suggested that flies were the most likely pollinator.