Christine Khong

Duncan
APES- Period 2
25 December 2010
The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan Book Review

The Botany of Desire explores the interplay of relationships between humans and plants

and how the two have coevolved throughout generations to what we know of them today.

Michael Pollan, the book’s author, captures the simple human desires including sweetness,

beauty, intoxication, and control with plants that are able to fulfill those desires including the

apple, tulip, marijuana, and the potato. The main focus of the book is to shift the vantage point of

humans to those of plants, highlighting the question of who is in control.

Starting out with the apple, Pollan surrounds this subject with the story of John Chapman,

or as we may know as Johnny Appleseed and how his spread of apple trees into the western

frontier led to the transformation of “the apple into a blemish-free plastic-red saccharine orb” (7).

He explains that the apple has provided humans with a refuge for sweetness and how the desire

has been a force of evolution. Without their appealing substances, apples may not have been

domesticated, eventually leading to the selective breeding of apples humans are doing today. The

author then looks at the desire for beauty and how the tulip started what was known as

“tulipomania” a craze across Europe, but particularly Holland (85). Mentioned in this chapter,

the tulip had the ability to marvel humans with its dazzling color varieties and to receive the

praise of many people even acting as a means of currency. But when the tulip craze died out,

many of the Dutch people fell into bankruptcy. The last two chapters focus on intoxication,

fulfilled by the marijuana plant and control which is fulfilled by potatoes. During its time, both

the marijuana plant and potatoes had a relationship with humans in their own way. The

marijuana plant had the ability to veer the mind and highlight one’s senses in a way that humans
found magical. By producing “a chemical so mysterious in its effects on human consciousness”

that overtime, the plant becomes a “sacrament” (144). During 1970s when marijuana was

“pushed indoors” by the federal government, many growers risked their lives to continue

growing their plants underground (131). The potato, especially in Ireland acted as a staple food

that could feed many people. The Irish then began the practice of monoculture eventually leading

to a disease which caused potatoes to rot leading to a “potato famine” which was “the worst

catastrophe to befall Europe since the Black Death of 1348” (230). So who really was in control?

The audience that would most likely appreciate this text would be those interested in

botany and how it has altered history itself or how humans have altered the chemical make ups

of plants. This book would be fairly suitable to people even looking for a new outlook in life,

perhaps on a more natural rather than philosophical way.

I feel as though this book does an amazing job at focusing on subjects such as natural

selection, the Gaia hypothesis, and biodiversity found in our environmental class. In this book,

readers are placed in the position of a plant rather than humans to journey through how humans

and plants have coevolved through generations. Humans have provided artificial selection and

genetically altered the DNA of plants by means of their own desires, in this case in examples

such as the apple, (breeding apples of the sweetest species), and the potato, (altering the genetic

make-up of a potato to make its own insecticide or to become the perfect potatoes for producing

French fries). The Gaia Hypothesis idea that life on Earth has coevolved, in this case humans and

plants, changing each other reciprocally is highlighted by the chapter on marijuana and how

people have allowed the plant to thrive and spread by crossbreeding and at the same time the

plant has led to psychoactive effects on the human mind render a new age of transcendence with

different music, art, and philosophy, ultimately changing the culture in several places. But also
with domestication of plants, comes a decrease in biodiversity which is explored with the apple

and potato and how the two are now or have been extremely susceptible to diseases because of

the low number of species due to cloning or monoculture. These same ideas are included in the

study of environmental science thus making this book a great and worthy read for students and

teachers.

One of the underlying themes in The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan also relates to

the article in TIME Magazine, “Wildlife: Protecting Biodiversity Might Just Protect Us From

Disease” by Bryan Walsh, which is the preservation of biodiversity. In the Pollan’s book, it is

mentioned that as humans domesticate plants to their own desires, such as the apple to our sweet

tastes, we are virtually destroying the diversity of the apple species by only breeding the few

species of apple we like the best. According to the article, “as biodiversity decreases, in many

cases there's an increase in pathogens—and more risk for human beings” therefore, we are

ultimately hurting ourselves (Walsh). The book also mentions that now potatoes are being grown

as clones to produce perfect french-fries, and with such low biodiversity, the potatoes are

extremely susceptible to disease and pests which leads to the farmer having to use immense

amounts of harsh chemicals to protect the potatoes. Some of which are still toxic to humans but

without the use of it, plants and animals in the field could transfer to the disease to humans

which relates to the main idea of article. Then by destroying forests to simplify an ecosystem,

“the plants that contain the raw materials of future medicines” when they’re lost, “they’ll be lost

forever” which is an idea highlighted in the book with wild plants (Walsh). The article gives a

kind of overview of biodiversity, whereas the book explores the idea with specific plants, giving

it a more personalized outlook.