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Good afternoon, and welcome to Globe Climate, a newsletter about climate change, environment and resources in Canada.

This spring, don’t forget the story of the flower, and how it changed our world. Keep reading, because we’ll get into the weeds of the evolution of beauty in blossoms.

Now, let’s catch you up on other news, including space updates.

1. Space: How the Artemis II mission is rekindling humanity’s long love affair with the moon
2. Adventure: Canadian Olivia Cazes wants to be the first woman to horseback ride across the Americas
3. Conservation: Ottawa announces $3.8-billion nature strategy, laying out path to protect 30 per cent of lands and waters by 2030
4. Pollution: First Nations chiefs demand apology after Carney says he could “outlast” First Nations woman who was protesting over mercury poisoning in her community
5. Agriculture: It’s getting harder to find real chocolate, but Canadian craft chocolate makers are fighting the good fight

Spring awakening

For this week’s deeper dive, we take a closer look at the power of the flower.

As blooms emerge this spring, here is your reminder that they connect us to one of life’s most powerful creative forces. Today, we forget how radical they were at first, because flowering plants are nature’s great disruptors.

Floral beauty is a world-changing superpower, writes David George Haskell whose latest book is How Flowers Made our World: The Story of Nature’s Revolutionaries. He says that flowers use beauty to link plants and animals into the collaborative unions that build and sustain much of the natural world.

About 130 million years ago, floral takeover of Earth was created through new forms of co-operation, often mediated by beauty.

Flowering plants have since built ecosystems from the rainforests to the Prairies, and they are the foundation of human agriculture. Flowers evolved to attract and motivate pollinators, and these reliable couriers are rewarded with nutritious nectar and pollen. Before that, insects were pests for most plants.

And while humans are not pollinators, flowers beguile us, too. Of course, without flowering plants in agriculture, most humans would starve. But we also use them to mark important connections and transitions in our life: courtship, weddings, burials and religious and secular celebrations.

You don’t need to remind those who participate in the annual Greater Victoria Flower Count about the power of the flower. While the rest of Canada was still in the throes of winter in early March, the Greater Victoria Area showed off the mildest climate in the country with a flower-counting competition.

And it’s not just schoolkids who join in the fun: For more than 50 years many adults tally flowers, too. It’s a fun method to boost local pride. It’s also a tongue-in-cheek way to gently tease the rest of the country.

This year, 86 billion blooms marked spring’s awakening.

“At a time when the news is dominated by violence and ugly top-down control, it’s good to remember the wisdom of flowers, time-tested over one hundred million years,” Haskell writes.

“Delighting in a flower therefore gives us more than a moment of sensory pleasure. The joy we feel connects us to the ancient, productive bond between flowers and animals,” he continues. “When the flowers emerge this spring, let’s celebrate them for what they are, catalysts for positive, opportunity-building change.”

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