Roam the Planet: Queen of Trees worth watching

Caught the last hour of "The Queen of Trees" (the latest installment of the PBS series "Nature") today. I'd been looking for sports but the Nature program instantly engrossed me. A fig tree and a community of tiny wasps carry on a fascinating symbiotic relationship:

There is typically only one species of wasp capable of fertilizing the flowers of each species of fig, and therefore plantings of fig species outside of their native range results in effectively sterile individuals. For example, in Hawaii, some 60 species of figs have been introduced, but only four of the wasps that fertilize them have been introduced, so only four species of figs produce viable seeds there. (Wikipedia)

Neil Genzlinger approves in the New York Times article "PBS 'Nature' Series, 'Queen of Trees,' Focuses on Giant Fig and Tiny Wasp."

Sex, drunkenness, treachery, murder. Not bad for a nature program about a fig tree.

"The Queen of Trees," an installment of the PBS series "Nature" tomorrow night, is full of little dramas of perseverance and interdependence, and no matter what your belief about how the world came to be, it will leave you awfully impressed at the handiwork.

So does Shannon Huebscher in Film Monthly.

Growing up I had a crabapple tree in my backyard, and every spring when it would blossom, the flowers were amazing. But as the flowers wilted and made way for the crabapples to grow and ripen, they would drop onto our concrete patio and become engrossed by insects and put off a horrible stench. After watching the NATURE documentary Queen of Trees, I have come to appreciate this process, rather than look back on it with a not-so-fond memory.

The film won a Peabody award.

The Queen of Trees, which the Peabody board called "a magnificent nature film," profiles an African sycomore [with an "o"] fig tree, an eco-system in and of itself. Presented in high definition, The Queen of Trees uses macro-photography to convey in extraordinarily vivid detail the astonishing relationship between the sycomore fig tree and the fig wasp - and its far-reaching ecological consequences. The Queen of Trees is a co-production of Deeble and Stone Productions, Thirteen/WNET New York, NHK, Granada International, BBC, and ZDF.