Humans may see flowering plants as pleasant decorations, but David George Haskell views them as radical forces that have shaped the evolution of countless other species and played key roles in the creation of some of Earth’s most important ecosystems, demonstrating the importance of protecting flowering plants. His new book, How Flowers Made Our World, explains how they did this and why it matters for the future.

Using examples such as orchids, seagrasses, and pansies, Haskell shows how flowers build relationships with other organisms and create ecological communities. He also explains how genetic flexibility has enabled flowering plants to move into new territories and adapt to radical changes in living conditions since they first evolved more than 130 million years ago.

Today, climate change and habitat loss are driving what Haskell and many other scientists consider Earth’s sixth mass extinction. To survive climate chaos, Haskell says, it’s essential to protect plants’ genetic diversity, further showing the importance of protecting flowering plants. That means shifting agriculture away from corn and soy monocultures to a wider range of crops, and populating parks and gardens with local plant species instead of species translocated from afar. Through steps like these, he writes, we can give plants what they need to be resilient in a rapidly changing world.

Yale Environment 360: You write that when flowering plants appeared on Earth, they caused “an explosion of biodiversity and ecological productivity” and that they did this mainly “through beauty and cooperation.” Can you unpack that statement?

David George Haskell: Beauty is a flower’s way of speaking the language that animals understand. Pollinating insects are an example. Insects were mostly nothing but trouble for plants for three or four hundred million years, until flowering plants flipped the narrative by providing aromas and rewards like nectar and pollen that the insects could eat. They turned former enemies into allies through interspecies communication. Evolution found a way for plants to tap into animals’ aesthetics, and flowers forged new bonds of cooperation that made their reproduction way more efficient.

From insects’ point of view, new opportunities for feeding didn’t even exist before flowering plants came along. Neither did bees or butterflies. The emergence of flowering plants spurred the evolution of a lot of new animals in response to these incredible opportunities for collaboration, demonstrating the need for protecting flowering plants.

Read the full article about protecting flowering plants by Jennifer Weeks at Yale Environment 360.