The First Flower

19 Oct 2012 A one hour Nova show.

https://youtu.be/f7ztefVrFnU

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New light shed on Charles Darwin's 'abominable mystery'

By Helen Briggs,     BBC Science correspondent

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-55769269

 Charles Darwin transformed the way we see the natural world

 GETTY IMAGES

A scientist has shed new light on the origins of Charles Darwin's "abominable mystery".

The famous naturalist was haunted by the question of how the first flowering plants evolved.

Darwin feared this inexplicable puzzle would undermine his theories of evolution, says Prof Richard Buggs.

Forgotten historical documents show a rival scientist was arguing for divine intervention in the rise of the flowering plants.

This greatly vexed Darwin in his final months, says the evolutionary biologist at Queen Mary, University of London.

"The mystery seems to have been made particularly abominable to him by its highly publicised use by the keeper of botany at the British Museum to argue for divine intervention in the history of life," he says.

What is the abominable mystery?

Darwin coined the phrase, abominable mystery, in 1879. In a letter to his closest friend, botanist and explorer Dr Joseph Hooker, he wrote: "The rapid development as far as we can judge of all the higher plants within recent geological times is an abominable mystery."

edit by CC see:  https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-55769269 for text.

Why was Darwin puzzled?

Darwin was deeply bothered by how flowering plants conquered the world seemingly in the blink of an eye, while other large groups, such as the mammals, evolved gradually.

The advent of flowering plants suggested evolution could be both rapid and abrupt, in direct contradiction to an essential element of natural selection, natura non facit saltum - nature makes no leap.

Darwin toyed with the idea that flowering plants might have evolved on an as yet undiscovered island or continent.

In August 1881, only months before his death, he wrote to Hooker: "Nothing is more extraordinary in the history of the Vegetable Kingdom, as it seems to me, than the apparently very sudden or abrupt development of the higher plants. I have sometimes speculated whether there did not exist somewhere during long ages an extremely isolated continent perhaps near the South Pole."

original post edited here CC:  https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-55769269

And is the mystery solved?

In short, no. "One hundred and forty years later, the mystery's still unsolved," says Prof Buggs. "Of course, we've made lots of progress in our understanding of evolution and in our knowledge of the fossil record, but this mystery is still there."

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