botany of desire a plant's eye view of the world

In 1637, one Dutchman paid as much for a single tulip bulb as the going price of a town house in Amsterdam. It is a journey that will change the way we think about our place in nature. So who is really domesticating whom? Weaving fascinating anecdote and accessible science in gorgeous prose, Pollan takes the reader on an absorbing journey through the landscape of botany and desire. The pioneers' desire for sweetness was satisfied-and the apple was given a whole new continent on which to blossom. Johnny Appleseed) floated down the Ohio River with bushels of apple seeds in his canoe, the settlers seized on the opportunity to grow the fruit on their new land. In nineteenth-century America, frontier dwellers far from the trading posts of the East lacked a source of sweetness in their diet-and sugar with which to make alcohol.

And just as we've benefited from these plants, the plants, in the grand coevolutionary scheme that Pollan so brilliantly evokes, have done remarkably well by us. The apple gratifies our taste for sweetness the tulip attracts us with its beauty marijuana offers intoxication and the genetically modified potato gives us a sense of control over nature. All four species are deeply woven into the fabric of our everyday lives, and Pollan illustrates how each has evolved a survival strategy based on satisfying one of humankind's most basic desires. In this utterly original narrative that blends history, memoir, and the best science writing, Pollan tells the story of four domesticated species-the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato-from the point of view of the plants. What Michael Pollan ingeniously demonstrates in The Botany of Desire is that people and domesticated plant species have formed a similarly reciprocal relationship, a relationship that is just as common and essential to the way nature works. Or are they? What if those potatoes and tulips have evolved to gratify certain human desires so that humans will help them multiply? What if, in other words, these plants are using us just as we use them? Every schoolchild learns about the mutually beneficial dance of honeybees and flowers: The bee collects nectar and pollen to make honey and in the process spreads the flowers' genes far and wide. Two straightforward examples of how humans act on nature to get what we want.

A gardener plants tulip bulbs in the fall and, come spring, has a riotous patch of color to admire. An Idaho farmer cultivates Russet Burbank potatoes so that a customer at a McDonald's half a world away can enjoy a long, golden french fry.

Botany of desire a plant's eye view of the world