The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World
by Michael Pollan
As humans, we are thinking
that it’s up to us control nature and happily to use plants and animals to
improve our life. However, if we look at it from another point of view, we’ll
find some interesting facts. Some plants trick us to take care of them and help
them to survive without us knowing it. The book is about four different families
of plants that match specific basic human desires: sweetness, beauty,
intoxication, and control.
The First chapter is
about the human desire for sweetness and it talks about the apple fruit
specifically. It describes the origin and history of the apple tree the
importance of the Johnny Apple seed (John Chapman). The seed was grown and
distributed by him in the United State in the early 19th century the apple tree
passes its genetic information through its seeds and it is possible to grow trees
with different fruit flavors and appearance. Since 1900 apples have become more
popular and people have chosen to grow apple trees with sweeter fruit. The
human desire for sweetness selected the tree types that become more popular and
therefore more likely to be distributed around a world.
The second chapter of this
book is about breeding and plant flowering plants, which meets human beauty desire.
The plant that is chosen for this chapter is tulip, which is originally from Central
Asia. This chapter contains an interesting historical story about how a
beautiful useless plant distributed all around the world. Approximately more
than some 19 million flowers change hands each day just in the Aalsmeer Flower
Market, Netherland.
Intoxication desire is the
third chapter of the book and Marijuana is the plant that is chosen for this
chapter. Marijuana was dispersed around the world, mainly in India and China due
to ability of gratifying human consciousness. Marijuana had used as a medicine
and pain relief for labor pains, asthma and rheumatism in 19th century but
usage of it had been changed and people started to used eventually it as a drug
and it became illegal in most countries around world. It’s interesting how
people risk their life and their freedom to grow more of Marijuana.
The roots of the potato
plant began in Peru. In the 16th
century, when Spaniards occupied Peru, they took the potato to Europe. Later
on, Irish community grew one single type of potato, the Lumper. The Lumper
potato, with their genetic uniformity, soon turned vulnerable to biological
pests. It was explained in this chapter how the New Leaf potato was genetically
modified. This genetically modification helped killing pests with fewer toxins.
However, genetically modified food raised a public concern for the possible
effects that it can cause. For that reason, it was removed from the market.
