SEPTEMBER 27

Sir David Attenborough gets awfully intimate with his subject in The Secret Life of Plants, a book on plant propagation written to accompany a BBC-TV series of the same title. The writer/filmmaker recounts trees’ and flowers’ efforts to sow their wild oats, as it were, and Secret‘s lush, full-color images of damp pistils and stamens is worthy of a PG-13 rating. Just check out the centerfold-style spread of a gecko that “drinks nectar from native flax and gathers pollen on its throat,” or the photo of a long-nosed bat, its face covered in pollen, that “although equipped with an exceptionally long tongue, has to thrust its head deep into a cactus flower in order to reach the nectar.” It’s as steamy as a greenhouse. Attenborough discusses his work at 6 p.m. at the Museum of Natural History’s Baird Auditorium, 10th & Constitution Ave. NW. $13. For reservations call (202) 357-3030. (Nathalie op de Beeck)