<p>Prof Kathy Willis, Director of Science at the Royal Botanic Garden, Kew, with the omnibus edition of her history of our changing relationship with plants during the 19th century.</p><p>She examines the race to tame and culture the prized Amazonian water lily which played out in glare of the nations' new greenhouses; the smuggling of rubber seeds out of Brazil to establish a rubber industry in the British colonies; how a growing passion for orchids opened a new episode in cultivating exotic plants for all; the threat posed by the rise of invasive species; and how a new precision in understanding the behaviour of hybrids led to the birth of modern genetics at the close of the 19th century.</p><p>Producer Adrian Washbourne.</p>
