He is a researcher who flourishes among corollas, ears of corn and cabbage. Sporty and smiling, François Parcy digs his furrow in the field of floral development, at the University of Grenoble-Alpes (CNRS-CEA-Inrae). His armfuls of experiences and his harvest of discoveries earned him the CNRS silver medal in 2022.
But the geneticist also makes his honey by sharing his floral booty with others. “Flowers, everyone loves and admires them. They are privileged objects for talking about science, molecular biology, genetics and evolution., he enthuses, a hint of sunshine in his accent. With a lively passion, this great walker takes us back more than two hundred million years, in the footsteps of an unknown saga: that of flowering plants. This thrilling evolutionary adventure inspired him to write a book, The Secret History of Flowers (Editions Humensciences, 2019). Book that has just been adapted into a documentary, The Abominable Mystery of Flowers (co-written by Clément Champiat and François Tribolet, France 5, 2022, available in replay).
“François is an excellent speaker; more than that, he’s a real storytellertestifies Teva Vernoux, biologist at the CNRS-ENS in Lyon. When he talks about flowers, he captivates not only the general public but also those who know the subject. »
His lectures, François Parcy willingly begins them with verses by Baudelaire: “Happy is he (…) Who hovers over life, and effortlessly understands / The language of flowers and silent things! » (The evil flowers, 1857). But it is to better convince us, then, that this poetic language is only a decoy – an artifice of seduction. It allows the flowers, those flirtatious ones, to dedicate their bait – shapes, scents and colors – not to our eyes and our nostrils, but to those of the pollinators, their so precious allies, whom they thus attract into their nets. And the researcher to list “the sum of innovations” which allowed these “Adaptation champions” to supplant their rivals: in addition to their weapons of massive seduction aimed at foraging species, they can bet on “a smaller genome and cells, more efficient photosynthesis…” In return, these slender creatures have conquered the globe, forming more than 90% of current plant species.
Put your intuition to work
If the determinism of plants leaves little room for free will, human trajectories seem – a little – more open. “My parents stopped their studies very early, so I fall into the category of “class defectors”confides François Parcy. The beauty of the French education system is that it does not always reproduce the family pattern. » No determinism in the path he followed, really? It should be noted that his mother was a florist – this cannot be invented…
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