The Botany Of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View Of The World (2002) - Plot & Excerpts
This is a marvellous book, which discusses the science, sociology, aesthetics and culture, relating to four plants.ApplesTulipsMarijuanaPotatoesBecause of who I am, the things that interested me most were the tulip and potato sections.With the first, he discusses the notorious obsession surrounding tulip cultivation in Holland in the 17th century. With the second he discusses a genetically modified potato which was on sale in the US at the time he wrote the book, in 2001. The potato is a variety called NewLeaf. This is no longer a product being promoted by the company which produces the seeds for it (Monsanto of course), but what the author has to say about it is still very relevant with regard to current and future vegetable research. It has left me feeling a lot less blazé about GM vegetables and monocultures. This may be the only way forward if we are to feed the vast number of people on this planet, but it comes at a price - and that price may be largely unknown. In contrast to the huge vegetable factory-type farming discussed in most of this section, Pollan also visits an organic farmer, and the difference hits you big time. Everything about the factory farms are so alien, and brutal in their approach, (they seemingly use anything they can to get the most produce for the least bucks); and everything about the organic farm is so much more harmonious, and working respectfully with nature. Interestingly the main factory-type vegetable farmer he spoke to, also grows organic vegetables, but just for him and his family's consumption. Go figure.He also fairly briefly discusses the horrors of the Irish Potato Famine between 1845 and 1852, and that too was extremely interesting.And now on to matters of the heart. The section on tulips in the 17th century was a great pleasure to read. Here I am just going to type a few chunks out of the book, (some rather chopped about I'm afraid) for those of you who fancy a brief excursion into a time of passion, madness and decadence.(view spoiler)[Tulip mania in Holland reached its peak between 1634 and 1637.The queen of all tulips was Semper Augustus. "Generally regarded at the time as the most beautiful flower in the world. In 1624 there were only a dozen or so specimens, most of them owned by Dr. Adriaen Pauw.This was the intricately-feathered red and white tulip - one bulb of which could change hands for 10,000 guilders at the height of the mania, a sum that would have bought one of the grandest canal houses in Amsterdam. It is now gone from nature. But I have seen paintings of it (the Dutch would commission portraits of venerable tulips they couldn't afford to buy.) Beside a Semper Augustus a modern tulip looks like a toy.A tulip that falls out of favour soon goes extinct. Generally a strain won't last unless it is regularly replanted, so the chain of genetic continuity can be broken in a generation. Even when people do continue to plant a particular tulip, the vigour of that variety (which is propagated by removing and planting the bulb's "offsets", the little genetically identical bulblets that form at its base) eventually fades and must be abandoned...... Tulips, in other words, are mortal.No tulip appears in the flower-crowded borders of medieval tapestries, nor is the flower ever mentioned in the early 'herbals' - the Old World encyclopedias of the world's known plants and their uses. The fierceness of the passion that the tulip unleashed in Holland in the seventeenth century (and to a lesser extent in France and England) may have had something to do with the flower's novelty in the west, and the suddenness of its appearance. It is the youngest of our canonical flowers. Ogier Ghislain De Busbecq, an Austrian, claimed to have introduced the first tulip to Europe, sending a consignment of bulbs from Constantinople in 1554. (The word 'tulip' is a corruption of the Turkish word for 'turban'.)Tulips, like apples, do not come true from seed - which accounts for the astonishing variety it can produce.....though it takes 7 years before a tulip grown from seed flowers and shows its new colours.(In seventeenth century Holland) botany became a national pastime, followed as closely and avidly as we follow sports today.Land in Holland being so scarce and expensive, Dutch gardens were miniatures, measured in square feet rather than acres and frequently augmented with mirrors. The Dutch thought of their gardens as jewel boxes, and in such a space even a single flower...could make a powerful statement.What the Dutch really sought were 'broken' tulips, these were flowers where you get a white or yellow ground, with intricate feathers or flames of a vividly contrasting hue.In the 1920s the electron microscope was invented, and scientists discovered that the virus causing broken tulips was spread by myzus persicae, the peach potato aphid. Peach trees were common in seventeenth century gardens. By the 1920s the Dutch regarded their tulips as commodities to trade...and since the virus weakened the bulbs it infected (the offsets of a 'broken' tulip were small and few in number), Dutch growers set about ridding their fields of the infection.There was another Dutch obsession - a quest that has gone on for 400 years - the quest for a black tulip. Today we have 'Queen of the Night' - a dark, glossy maroonish purple. Breeders today are busily seeking a new black tulip because they know that this current standard bearer is probably on her way out. Alexandre Dumas wrote a novel 'The Black Tulip' (in 1850) based on this search." (hide spoiler)]
In East Asian cultures – according to my increasingly Japanese daughters – the number four brings bad luck. This is because it sounds a bit like the word for death. Clearly the number four has no such associations for Michael Pollan. The Omnivore’s Dilemma is based around four meals and this one is based around four plants. I’ve done more than just enjoy these two books, they have completely enchanted me whilst also informing me and keeping me greatly amused.Now, desire sounds like a strong word to use about botany. There is, of course, that Frank Zappa song Call Any Vegetable and it will respond to you – I think this is also the song which ends with the memorable line, “O what a pumpkin!”Now that isn’t quite the desire Pollan is talking about here. His four plants are: the apple, the tulip, marijuana and the potato. As a one time Irishman I have no problem with the idea that the potato might make the list of plants of desire, but I can see that others might struggle most with that one being included.This book is based on the idea that plants use us as much as we use them – and the plants best able to meet our desires are the plants we help most to spread about the world. So much so that we tend to make monocultures of those plants that best match our desires – something that is arguably as much a problem for the plants as it is a boon for them.Do you know when you sort of know the story to something, even if you don’t quite know the details? I had that kind of relationship with the story of Johnny Appleseed (aka John Chapman). While I had some notion of him going around frontier America planting apple seeds (and ten points for promoting dental health) he was never really going to cut it beside, say, Daniel Boone (what a dream come-er-true-er was he!). Little did I know that rather than being a man dedicated to the random distribution of apple seeds, he actually sold apple trees to pioneers (when not considering matrimony with stray 10 year olds). Pioneers were keen to buy the said apple trees not due to the dearth of doctors being kept away by all those apples being eaten, but rather the equally troubling shortage of bartenders. Apples being as good a way as any to make a pleasant alcoholic drink – and one that wasn’t complained about in the Bible. It is here that Pollan develops one of his major metaphors – borrowed from Nietzsche (that most popular of masturbatory German philosophers) of the dichotomy between the Apollonian and the Dionysian. I’ve generally found this to be one of the more lucid and intelligent things Nietzsche ever said and so wasn’t disappointed that so much time was devoted to this idea in this book. Basically, Apollo was the god of order and light, Dionysus the god of wine and orgies. Our obsession with growing the same potato all over the world to make the perfect McDonalds fry is symbolic of the Apollonian desire – Johnny Appleseed growing apple trees from seed and thereby getting a vast number of genetically different trees symbolic of the Dionysian.This central tension forms a large part of the basis of the book. It proves an interesting thing to say about Tulips too, and obviously also of marijuana. I guess it is possible that if Dionysus was with us today he might well be a pot head. The stuff about marijuana is very interesting. Particularly the fact that it has become about 10 times more potent over the years and that this increase in potency is directly attributable to the ‘war on drugs’. Pollan makes an interesting case for the idea that if the US government hadn’t spent billions of dollars imprisoning its citizens and fighting a war it could never win, pot would still be coming into the States from Mexico and would not have been bred up to being the super drug it is today. Pollan says that his initial reaction to smoking pot was much the same as mine has always been. That its main effects seemed to be to make me feel paranoid and stupid. Having been brought up in the loony left I really didn’t need chemistry to help me be paranoid, or stupid, for that matter. Apparently, this is because on the rare occasions when I did smoke pot I was smoking ‘blue collar’ marijuana. Which is probably for the best.Again, as with the apples and the tulips, I did know much of the story of marijuana before I started reading, but not really all of the details. The story of tulips causing a major economic bubble is worth reflecting on at the moment. The plants themselves are equally fascinating, as are little facts gleaned along the way about depression and plant viruses.But the section on the potato is riveting – and not just for the Irish. This is similar to the first section of The Omnivore’s Dilemma on corn. We really are going to have to do something about the way we produce food – and if you need to know why, then reading this chapter will make it all clear. If the only way we can grow potatoes for McDonald’s fries is to kill the planet then perhaps (and this is just a suggestion) we shouldn’t be eating McDonald’s fries.I think I liked The Omnivore’s Dilemma better than this one, but really, they were both fascinating and well worth the read.
What do You think about The Botany Of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View Of The World (2002)?
I thought this was an interesting but long winded book. The author discusses 4 different plants and how they have 'coevolved' with humans to reap the benefits of human interaction. It is best summed up in one of the first chapters of the book as the author ponders if he planted potatoes in his garden out of his own accord of did the potatoes, by virtue of their deliciousness, pursuade him to plant them?One of the main things I learned from this book is the value of diversity. From the loss of he
—Jenn
This is an enjoyable book that wanders back and forth through the subjects of botany, history, and literary philosophy. An example of the later is quoted below:"For look into a flower, and what do you see? Into the very heart of nature's double nature--that is, the contending energies of creation and dissolution, the spring toward complex form and the tidal pull away from it. Apollo and Dionysus were names the Greeks gave to these two faces of nature, and nowhere in nature is their contest as plain or as poignant as it is in the beauty of a flower and its rapid passing. There, the achievement of order against all odds and its blithe abandonment. There, the perfection of art and the blind flux of nature. There, somehow, both transcendence and necessity. Could that be it--right there, in a flower--the meaning of life?"By the time a reader has finished this book they'll know more about apples, tulips, marijuana, and potatoes than ever before. And along the way perhaps the reader will have picked up a slightly enhanced understanding the interaction of humans and plant life. And as indicated in the quote above, they will be introduced to the author's possible insight into the meaning of life. Every topic in this book was subjected to the Apollo vs. Dionysus analysis somewhere along the line.In the section on marijuana the author provides a detailed description of what it means in terms of neurochemistry to be high on marijuana. This information was new to me. I got the impression this subject has not been fully researched and there still remains some speculation in the descriptions. He did make the definitive statement that nobody has ever died from an overdose of THC (active ingredient in marijuana). That certainly cannot be said for alcohol. So why is alcohol legal and marijuana outlawed? They both can pose a danger to society if misused, but one is publicly advertised with the caveat, "Please drink responsibly." The other is a crime to possess or use. Surely there's no rational basis for this difference.The last section on the potato came down pretty hard on genetically engineered plants. I am not as emotionally opposed to this science as some appear to be. I'm in favor of asking questions and looking for problems that may arise. But I'm willing to eat genetically engineered food in the meantime. I figure that if we wait to be absolutely sure of no adverse consequences before using advances in science, all scientific and technological advances will cease. My hat is off to Michael Pollan for being able to write an interesting narrative around rather ordinary topics. He has the skills of a talented story teller to combine historical and scientific facts with tales of his own personal adventures and interviews with other people. I had to give the book five stars because, quite frankly, I found it to be an enjoyable and interesting book.Here's a short review of this book from my PageADay Book Lover's Calendar:THE APPLE TREE’S DILEMMA“Without flowers, the reptiles, which had gotten along fine in a leafy, fruitless world, would probably still rule. Without flowers, we would not be,” writes Michael Pollan in his absolutely engaging book on the way plants and humans have lived and evolved together. His method is similar to that in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, in that he takes four plants—apples, tulips, marijuana, and potatoes—and gives us their perspective on the complex relationship between plants and humans. Delicious and nutritious reading.THE BOTANY OF DESIRE: A PLANT’S-EYE VIEW OF THE WORLD, by Michael Pollan (Random House, 2002)
—Clif Hostetler
I love books that open my eyes, teach me something, and even go so far as to re-educate me on the fallacies foisted upon me by ill-informed grammar school teachers. To that last end, I found the chapter on Johnny Appleseed very enlightening as well as highly entertaining. Pollan is more humorous and, let's just say, more adventurous than one might expect from a botanist (see his passages on hallucinogenic plants.) Farmers on any scale will enjoy and find use in The Botany of Desire. For myself, I've finally transitioned over to organic apples. I don't know who would eat another kind after reading this book.
—Jason Koivu
