The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan

The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan looks at plants from the unique perspective of how they manipulated humans into growing and tending them. I like this perspective and the points of how plants used to naturally evolve to avoid pests, but now have to be genetically engineered or sprayed with pesticides.

Pollan looks at 4 plants: apples, tulips, cannabis, and potatoes.

The story on apples turns into a history of the apple and Johnny Appleseed. John Whitaker (or Appleseed) spread apple orchards across the land, selling them to settlers who were required by the government to plant 50 on every lot they settled to avoid speculation. The trouble with apples, however, is that they don’t come true from seed. They have to be grafted, so all the apples Whitaker planted were spitters, or bitter apples. Whitaker’s apples were still desirable on the frontier, however, as they were used to make hard cider and apple jack (a strong apple brandy).
Apples are amazingly diverse, and evolve drastically if not grafted. Pollan visited an apple library in New York with over 2,500 apples. Some small and purple, others blue, and all of them with varying tastes. The library is kept because wild types of apples may be needed to fight a natural pests that can’t be fought synthetically. Pollan ends his apple adventure by planting some seed apples of his own, in the hope of continuing the wild strain should it ever be needed to find a gene to develop resistance to some new pest of nature.

For tulips Pollan observes how flowers came to symbolize beauty among humans. Tulips are thought to have first been cultivated by the Turks and then the Dutch. Tulips underwent an investment craze when their bulbs were written into futures contracts in Holland in the 1600s, only to burst when people had to pay $1000 for a flower bulb. Pollan takes us back in time to when the first flower evolved and how it symbolizes the balance between function and beauty, perhaps the point of life.

Pollan next looks at cannabis, where the best gardeners of our time have fled to Holland (yet again) to dedicate their time and genius to growing the world’s number one cash crop. There he finds intricate indoor conditions for growing cannabis, and how the plant itself has evolved to handle such extremes.

What are the roles mind altering drugs have played in evolution? Would addled creatures with a loss of coordination not have died out in the survival of the fittest? Or do drugs (including coffee, alcohol, and chocolate) have benefits in terms of letting us concentrate, focus, and handle social conflict? A further interesting analysis shows the roles drugs have played in religion, even Christianity can’t escape as Jesus himself turned water into wine, and claimed his blood to be made of wine. Pollan delves deeper into this topic, looking at consciousness itself, and the role of plants in altering or intensifying our consciousness.

Pollan’s last look at the potato focuses on the issue of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Pollan has been given a sample of potatoes with the BT gene, a gene which produces the pesticide BT in every part of the plant.
Pollan plants the spuds, and notices how he does not own the rights to the genes, that is to say, to replant the spuds the next year, or give the spuds to someone else.
Traveling to large commercial potato farms he finds the spuds are welcomed as a environmentally beneficial alternative to spraying potato leaves white with pesticides and making the soil grey with herbicides. Going to an organic farmer, he gets a different opinion, as the farmer expresses concern over genetic drift so that other plants produce BT, and pests eventually becoming resistant.
The question on whether or not GMO foods are harmful to humans is inconclusive, there simply has not been any testing either way. This is not unusual with humans as controlled trials are difficult. It took years to prove cigarettes cause cancer.

Pollan concludes that GMOs present a new stage in the nature-man relationship, one that breaks the variety and genius of nature. To be certain, the botany of desire still exists in GMO products since the plants benefit from having BT genes, but there are reservations where the plant cannot naturally reproduce. Pollan finishes his book advocating a more natural and equal approach to agriculture. Man and plants should work side by side, tending and nurturing each other in a way a gardener and garden could only understand. It is a nice vision, and a beckoning call.

But the Botany of Desire from Amazon.com