The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World
If you enjoyed this review, please consider purchasing this book from my Amazon Associates link: https://amzn.to/390Z6NW. The commissions I receive from your purchase help pay for the costs of running this website. Thanks for your support!
Michael Pollan is a cool guy who really loves to garden. I like when he garden-splains to me, because he comes across as genuine rather than an annoying know-it-all, even though he knows it all. I previously reviewed In Defense of Food, which helped me eat more green things.
He wrote The Botany of Desire to rethink domestication; we think of domestication as something we do to other species, but what about what they do to us? From an evolutionary perspective, a proliferating plant is doing very well for itself and has somehow convinced humans it’s worthy of being planted. We could think of ourselves as big ass bees. We spread seeds and make plant babies.
In the book, Pollen splits his focus between four plants: apples, tulips, marijuana, and potato.
In the apple chapter, I learned interesting facts about apples (like the deceitful origin of “An apple a day keeps the doctor away”), but 55 pages about apples is too many pages about apples. He should not have led with this chapter. The tulip chapter picked up some steam. Flowers are attention seekers-- if humans think they’re pretty, the flowers thrive. So you agree, you think you’re really pretty? Again, some intriguing tales (like Tulipmania in 1930s Holland, which was the first major financial bubble) met with gradually waning interest.
Cue the marijuana chapter. This. Chapter. Is. Excellent. Obviously, marijuana is a sexier topic, but this chapter is also juicier because it talks about stuff like: obscure, arbitrary laws that apply to gardening, how the war against cannabis butts against the Bill of Rights, the purpose of cannabinoid receptors in our brains, etc.
That stuff is just more compelling to me. So, after riding ~high~ from the marijuana chapter, I feared what was coming next: the potato chapter. The potato?? Borrrrring. Except...page after page, I found myself more and more alert. Upright in my chair, even. This chapter is compelling in its own right, because instead of just being about any old potato, it’s about the NewLeaf-- a patented, genetically engineered potato that can protect itself from insects and diseases with its own pesticidal genes. The chapter unfolded into a philosophical exploration of what we expect from our farmers, what our purchases say about our sentiments toward food, and how we should regulate an industry that’s starting to play God via genetic engineering.
Pollan’s approach is a mix of objective and subjective, so I learned without feeling like I was reading from a textbook. It took me a while to decide between 3 and 4 flames, but I settled on 4 because the last two chapters are really impressive and they completely redeem the first half. So, The Botany of Desire receives 4 out of 5 flames.
