The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World

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The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World

4.04 of 5 stars 4.04 · rating details · 22,681 ratings · 2,003 reviews

The book that helped make Michael Pollan,theNew York Timesbestselling author ofCookedandThe Omnivore’s Dilemma,one of the most trusted food experts in America

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. In The Botany of De...more

Paperback, 297 pages

Published May 28th 2002 by Random House Trade Paperbacks (first published 2001)

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Dec 26, 2012 Jason Koivu rated it 4 of 5 stars

I love books that open my eyes, teach me something, and even go so far as to re-educate me on the fallacies foisted upon me by ill-informed grammar school teachers. To that last end, I found the chapter on Johnny Appleseed very enlightening as well as highly entertaining. Pollan is more humorous and, let's just say, more adventurous than one might expect from a botanist (see his passages on hallucinogenic plants.) Farmers on any scale will enjoy and find use in The Botany of Desire. For myself,...more

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Aug 28, 2007 Emily rated it 5 of 5 stars

Okay, okay, books by Michael Pollan are clearly a fad right now, but I have bought into it whole-heartedly. He is an amazing, amazing writer: he makes me want to plant a garden, to tour his garden (his bedroom? what?), to only eat organic food, and to find out the story and origin of every morsel of food I put in my body. But he does it in a way that isn't overly preachy or agenda-driven. Instead, he lets you get what he is saying while at the same time telling an engaging, well-researched story...more

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Aug 20, 2009 Jessica rated it 5 of 5 stars

just as a warning, the below is not really about the book by pollan at all (which is great, btw!), but is mostly some really juvenile hatin' on thoreau. so if you read it, shut up, i warned you; i needed to get some trash-talking out of my system before going on w/ my day.

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so i cannot, for the life of me, read thoreau. & this may not be entirely his fault. it may not just be that i find him frustratingly ignorant, pompous, rambling, lacking cohesion & coherence, more irritatingly...more just as a warning, the below is not really about the book by pollan at all (which is great, btw!), but is mostly some really juvenile hatin' on thoreau. so if you read it, shut up, i warned you; i needed to get some trash-talking out of my system before going on w/ my day.

*********

so i cannot, for the life of me, read thoreau. & this may not be entirely his fault. it may not just be that i find him frustratingly ignorant, pompous, rambling, lacking cohesion & coherence, more irritatingly than profoundly w/out style, hypocritical, blah blah blah... because when i think these things i assume it's at least partly because i'm either too stupid or too culturally vapid to "get it" (tho in this case that theory's feeling a little stretched).

to be fair, ht also has pretty shit luck w/ me. when i finally got around to reading a full collection of his essays this week it was for a class, making this the first time i can EVER IN MY LIFE remember reading something i didn't want to read (so of course, irritatedface); i was also around 3/4 of the way thru when i picked up a copy of the botany of desire, which makes the former collection look like preschool sketchwork & illustrates perfectly my theory that michael pollan's nature writings (his less overtly-about-agribusiness writings) are thoreau minus suck.

so now i'm pretty much ruined for thoreau, even tho pollan quotes him & references him & generally seems to boycrush on him. whatever, michael pollan; you may not be happy about it, but you've allowed me to feel WAY SUPER COMFY about my visceral hatred for such essays as "walking," which, even if i'm humming along comfortably for a while, underlining & marking, suddenly breaks out such gems as "I THINK THAT THE FARMER DISPLACES THE INDIAN EVEN BECAUSE HE REDEEMS THE MEADOW, AND SO MAKES HIMSELF STRONGER AND IN SOME RESPECTS MORE NATURAL" (caps & emphasis mine, obvs), or the bullshit about the "weapons" ("the bush-whack, the turf-cutter, the spade, and the bog-hoe, rusted with the blood of many a meadow") that make the farmer's ability to "redeem" nature far superior to the unskilled following of the indian to natural occurring sources of food, or whatever fuck'd & self-contradictory political ramblings, oh my GOD i am so grossed out.

thoreau, you were probably a pretty cool dude once, but right now you seem like a libertarian w/ out the constitution, a naturalist w/out a respect for (or knowledge of) real nature, a man opposed to the press who finds himself entrenched in its habits. i will "appreciate your relevance" but i will not like you, & i will only ever read you when people make me, because michael pollan is like you if you were educated & relevant (but i know, dude, "every thought that passes through the mind helps to wear and tear it" - !!!!!!), if you were capable of transitions, if you cut out yr empty lines of political propaganda, if you were able to integrate culture & history & politics & mythology & science & some openly speculative musings into something enjoyable to read, if you didn't sound like such an obnoxious little fucker. you are gross, pollan is sexy, the end. now i'm going to go lie on the beach w/ a good book, goddamn it.(less)

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Elizabeth dude, i am always up for some "really juvenile hatin' on thoreau." ALWAYS.
Aug 23, 2009 08:39am

Emily I HATE THOREAU TOO! So much! Sophomoric little douchebag infatuated with the sound of your own voice, somehow self-righteous about your decision to li...more
Aug 24, 2009 10:38am

Jessica GUYS

WE NEED A HATE CLUB

+ e, trash-talking on goodreads may get out of control now that i'm going to school? trying to get all this thoreau business ou...more
Aug 24, 2009 11:14am

Feb 18, 2011 Alex rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011, biology

Pollan represents one of my favorite types of writers: modern polymaths who can bring scientific, historic and literary knowledge to bear on whatever they're writing about. When it's done well, I don't care what the question is; for instance, tulips aren't really my thing, despite their presence on my dining room table right now. The conversation between history, literature and science really interests me, though, which is why nearly all of the books I read fall into one of those categories.

(Tha...more Pollan represents one of my favorite types of writers: modern polymaths who can bring scientific, historic and literary knowledge to bear on whatever they're writing about. When it's done well, I don't care what the question is; for instance, tulips aren't really my thing, despite their presence on my dining room table right now. The conversation between history, literature and science really interests me, though, which is why nearly all of the books I read fall into one of those categories.

(That's sortof a joke.)

But I couldn't get into the first half of Botany of Desire, and the reason is that the book is padded. I've been curious about the reality behind the Johnny Appleseed legend, so it's terrific that he delved into it; but it would have made a great ten-page essay. Pollan stretches it for nearly 60 pages. He repeats himself (a lot); he circles around; he includes details about people he's met that are irrelevant and not all that interesting.

So far, so three star book.

The section on pot, though, gets terrifically - and sometimes hilariously - loopier. Halfway through this chapter - after an interesting history of what the War on Drugs has done for pot, and right at the point where, in other chapters, he would have started to repeat himself - he instead ends up in Amsterdam, trying the new breeds of pot for the first time, apparently, in years, and the rest of the chapter is one long, adoring love letter to the glories of weed - written (once admittedly, I suspect several other times not) while ecstatically baked. Non-pot-fans might find this chapter less endearing than I did, but for me, as a casual fan of the drug and, more importantly, as a guy who finds the question of what mind-altering drugs do for us interesting, it was the best part of the book. Too bad he still can't get past the slightly apologetic tone most grown-ups who still smoke pot feel forced to adopt - why not just mention it matter-of-factly as a normal thing many people do? That is, after all, what it is. But still. Fun stuff.

The final chapter on potatoes contains some of the usual "Holy shit, we have no idea what we're doing" stuff on genetic engineering, but his take on in it is interesting enough. Yeah, I dug this book.(less)

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Nov 13, 2008 Trevor rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: food, evolution, psychology, social-theory, science

In East Asian cultures – according to my increasingly Japanese daughters – the number four brings bad luck. This is because it sounds a bit like the word for death. Clearly the number four has no such associations for Michael Pollan. The Omnivore’s Dilemma is based around four meals and this one is based around four plants. I’ve done more than just enjoy these two books, they have completely enchanted me whilst also informing me and keeping me greatly amused.

Now, desire sounds like a strong word...more In East Asian cultures – according to my increasingly Japanese daughters – the number four brings bad luck. This is because it sounds a bit like the word for death. Clearly the number four has no such associations for Michael Pollan. The Omnivore’s Dilemma is based around four meals and this one is based around four plants. I’ve done more than just enjoy these two books, they have completely enchanted me whilst also informing me and keeping me greatly amused.

Now, desire sounds like a strong word to use about botany. There is, of course, that Frank Zappa song Call Any Vegetable and it will respond to you – I think this is also the song which ends with the memorable line, “O what a pumpkin!”

Now that isn’t quite the desire Pollan is talking about here. His four plants are: the apple, the tulip, marijuana and the potato. As a one time Irishman I have no problem with the idea that the potato might make the list of plants of desire, but I can see that others might struggle most with that one being included.

This book is based on the idea that plants use us as much as we use them – and the plants best able to meet our desires are the plants we help most to spread about the world. So much so that we tend to make monocultures of those plants that best match our desires – something that is arguably as much a problem for the plants as it is a boon for them.

Do you know when you sort of know the story to something, even if you don’t quite know the details? I had that kind of relationship with the story of Johnny Appleseed (aka John Chapman). While I had some notion of him going around frontier America planting apple seeds (and ten points for promoting dental health) he was never really going to cut it beside, say, Daniel Boone (what a dream come-er-true-er was he!). Little did I know that rather than being a man dedicated to the random distribution of apple seeds, he actually sold apple trees to pioneers (when not considering matrimony with stray 10 year olds). Pioneers were keen to buy the said apple trees not due to the dearth of doctors being kept away by all those apples being eaten, but rather the equally troubling shortage of bartenders. Apples being as good a way as any to make a pleasant alcoholic drink – and one that wasn’t complained about in the Bible.

It is here that Pollan develops one of his major metaphors – borrowed from Nietzsche (that most popular of masturbatory German philosophers) of the dichotomy between the Apollonian and the Dionysian. I’ve generally found this to be one of the more lucid and intelligent things Nietzsche ever said and so wasn’t disappointed that so much time was devoted to this idea in this book. Basically, Apollo was the god of order and light, Dionysus the god of wine and orgies. Our obsession with growing the same potato all over the world to make the perfect McDonalds fry is symbolic of the Apollonian desire – Johnny Appleseed growing apple trees from seed and thereby getting a vast number of genetically different trees symbolic of the Dionysian.

This central tension forms a large part of the basis of the book. It proves an interesting thing to say about Tulips too, and obviously also of marijuana. I guess it is possible that if Dionysus was with us today he might well be a pot head. The stuff about marijuana is very interesting. Particularly the fact that it has become about 10 times more potent over the years and that this increase in potency is directly attributable to the ‘war on drugs’. Pollan makes an interesting case for the idea that if the US government hadn’t spent billions of dollars imprisoning its citizens and fighting a war it could never win, pot would still be coming into the States from Mexico and would not have been bred up to being the super drug it is today. Pollan says that his initial reaction to smoking pot was much the same as mine has always been. That its main effects seemed to be to make me feel paranoid and stupid. Having been brought up in the loony left I really didn’t need chemistry to help me be paranoid, or stupid, for that matter. Apparently, this is because on the rare occasions when I did smoke pot I was smoking ‘blue collar’ marijuana. Which is probably for the best.

Again, as with the apples and the tulips, I did know much of the story of marijuana before I started reading, but not really all of the details. The story of tulips causing a major economic bubble is worth reflecting on at the moment. The plants themselves are equally fascinating, as are little facts gleaned along the way about depression and plant viruses.

But the section on the potato is riveting – and not just for the Irish. This is similar to the first section of The Omnivore’s Dilemma on corn. We really are going to have to do something about the way we produce food – and if you need to know why, then reading this chapter will make it all clear. If the only way we can grow potatoes for McDonald’s fries is to kill the planet then perhaps (and this is just a suggestion) we shouldn’t be eating McDonald’s fries.

I think I liked The Omnivore’s Dilemma better than this one, but really, they were both fascinating and well worth the read.
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Apr 16, 2008 Jen rated it 1 of 5 stars

I've wanted to read this book ever since it came out, but, so far, I've been pretty deeply disappointed by it. From the jacket copy and reviews I'd read, I'd come to expect a poetic lay-science book about the entwined destinies of plants and humans. Hell, that's what the author's introduction led me to expect, too.

I did not expect, nor want, most of the chapter on the apple to be more concerned about the historical realities of Johnny Appleseed than with the apple itself. I didn't want the autho...more

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Oct 03, 2007 Eh?Eh! rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: babble-added

Four common plants and I didn't know they each held such a rich history. Well, I was kind of familiar with marijuana's development (not from personal toking, honest Asian, but from being surrounded by tokers - hey, it was Oregon) and that it was completely villified in the "just say no" era of drug awareness education. The chapters on the apple, tulip, and potato offer cautionary evidence on the danger of destroying diversity in the name of commerce. Dratted industry and their shipping lives, ap...more

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Aug 26, 2007 Ken-ichi rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: learning

Wonderful, wonderful book, full of fantastic info and insights. My main critique is Pollan's main conceit, and the language used to express it: plant species have domesticated humanity just as much as humanity has domesticated them. My problem is his constant insertion of agency into the process of evolution and mixing metaphors of individuals and of species. Flowers are not individually clever, and neither are species of flowers. Flowers do not manipulate bees in the same way that a botanist ma...more Wonderful, wonderful book, full of fantastic info and insights. My main critique is Pollan's main conceit, and the language used to express it: plant species have domesticated humanity just as much as humanity has domesticated them. My problem is his constant insertion of agency into the process of evolution and mixing metaphors of individuals and of species. Flowers are not individually clever, and neither are species of flowers. Flowers do not manipulate bees in the same way that a botanist manipulates a flower species through artificial selection or genetic modification. Species do not have agency, the will to act. Only individuals have that, and individuals bees, potatoes, or water buffalo do not (to our knowledge), willfully offer themselves up as partners to humanity.

Pollan draws an interesting distinction that I haven't encountered in my amateur meanderings between "wilderness" and "wildness." He uses "wilderness" in the sense of the Wilderness Act of 1964, "an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain." "Wildness," on the other hand, is anything that humans cannot control. As Bill McKibben famously pointed out, the atmosphere of our planet is no longer a wilderness, tainted as it is by the byproducts of our industry, but as every hurricane and tornado reminds us, it is still profoundly wild.

Pollan uses this distinction to emphasize that while all domestication is a destruction of wilderness, it is almost never an abolition of wildness. The gardener uses his sense of order not to control his plants absolutely, but to guide and shape their wildness in certain ways. He goes on to suggest that genetic engineering may violate this pact, that by attempting to guide evolution on such a basic level is a powerful new way to write wildness out of the equation. He also offers the counterpoint that current techniques for gene insertion are (sometimes literally) so scattershot as to yield results that are even less predictable that conventional breeding.

The topic of wilderness feeds into another interesting point, which is that "memory is the enemy of wonder" (168). He argues that cannabinoids like THC help us experience awe and wonder by forcing constant short term memory loss, and that meditation or physical exertion probably induce the same effect, making the view from a mountain peak infinitely more profound after having hiked to it instead of having driven.

Another insight he had about marijuana is that drugs could be considered the mutagens of culture. If one assumes a meme is like a gene, then a culture is like a genome. Memes are constantly recombining through thought and discourse (intercourse in both culture and biology), but genuinely new ideas are rare. At the risk of spreading a metaphor too thin, Pollan suggests that drugs could be thought of as mutagens, radiation nuking the genetic fundaments of culture, producing mostly irrelevant or deleterious nonsense, but now and again creating viable gems (149). Kind of a fun thought.(less)

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Jan 20, 2008 Don rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Jason, Dad, Jono

Recommended to Don by: Scott Abbott

Shelves: entheogens, food, favorites, history

I read this a few days after "The Omnivore's Dilemma", and began it the day after picking up "In Defense of Food". I loved the former, thought the latter was thin and a resaying of what he'd already said. This book was a beautiful book, though not the tome that O.D was, it's beautifully written. It also sets the stage nicely for O.D.

Here, using apples (with their amazing capacity to evolve based on seeds that don't grow true to the parent), tuplips, cannabis and potatoes Pollan sets out plainly...more

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Sep 06, 2007 Deborah rated it 4 of 5 stars

I actually found this book a couple of years before Omnivore's Dilemma, and was impressed with the writing style: part essay, part research, part memoir, and all so well edited that there doesn't seem to be one wasted word. Not nearly as long as Omnivore, you can see how this book was the necessary first step for Pollan toward thinking about the relationship - and he does mean relationship, give and take - between what we treat as food or consumables, and human beings. The four consumables he lo...more

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Apr 08, 2007 Kat rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Everyone

Pollan's The Botany of Desire is by far one of the best books I have ever read, and it is one of those books that has changed my world view for the better. Pollan takes his readers on an odyssey through the natural histories of four plants that have been important to the course of human history, and relates them to a certain form of desire that he believes to be inherent in each and every person. He chronicles the potato (sustenance), the tulip (beauty), cannabis (pleasure), and the apple (sweet...more

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Aug 11, 2007 Lisa Vegan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: everyone, unless they loathe all non-fiction

Shelves: reviewed, non-fiction, nature, philosophy, science, history, favorites

I really enjoyed this book (and enjoyed the lecture I attended when the author talked about the book and answered questions.) He talks about 4 crops: apples, potatoes, tulips and marijuana, and the interactions between them and humans: history, culture, human psychology, and science, etc. I knew nothing much about botany and have never been particularly interested in that branch of science, but this book was a very easy read and I found it extremely fascinating. Gave it as a gift on a couple of...more

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Dec 27, 2008 Imogen rated it 4 of 5 stars

I was going on an airplane so I wanted to bring lots of different books for the different kinds of grumpy I get when I am in transit for a long time: I brought Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, Asking For It, The Great Perhaps- all of which were mine- and I raided my girlfriend's bookcase for this one, expecting this would be the last thing I'd pick up. I mean, I want to know about Michael Pollan, he is huge and important, right? And everybody in Berkeley wants him to be Obama's Secretary...more

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Dec 28, 2008 Lightreads rated it 3 of 5 stars

A brief but compelling history of four plants whose genetic destiny has been markedly altered by man – the apple, the tulip, cannabis, and the potato. Pollan’s argument is that, though we see domestication as a strictly top-down, subject-to-object process, there really may also be some co-evolutionary force at work. Johnny Appleseed’s efforts were to the overwhelming advantage of apple genetic proliferation, and the science of mass potato farming means more seeds are planted every year. But we’l...more A brief but compelling history of four plants whose genetic destiny has been markedly altered by man – the apple, the tulip, cannabis, and the potato. Pollan’s argument is that, though we see domestication as a strictly top-down, subject-to-object process, there really may also be some co-evolutionary force at work. Johnny Appleseed’s efforts were to the overwhelming advantage of apple genetic proliferation, and the science of mass potato farming means more seeds are planted every year. But we’ll get to the argument bit in a minute.

As quirky, offbeat history, this is fabulous. It turns out botany is an incredibly versatile vehicle in which to travel from social psychology to religion to bioethics. Pollan makes fascinating detours through early American advertising schemes, pauses briefly to describe the hallucinogenic mixture of mushrooms and opium European witches would administer via dildo, and then hops blithely on to the cost-benefit economics of potato plants engineered to make their own pesticide. It’s a wonderfully engaging trip, made all the more so by Pollan’s lucid, thoughtful, frankly lovely writing. I haven’t enjoyed a spot of nonfiction prose on a purely esthetic level in a long time, and for that pleasure alone I could recommend this book.

As for the argument – how best to put this – it’s not so much one. This whole co-evolution idea occurred to Pollan one day as he was gardening, and it never really leaves the realm of warm afternoon, busy hands, strange and intriguing thought. The whole thing comes out interesting, undeniably pretty, but ultimately nothing more than an intellectual exercise. An exercise I enjoyed, mind you, but I’m really not after musings over the Apollonian and Dionysian paradigms in my discussions of anything related to evolution: I’m after, you know, scientifically sound genotypic mechanisms. But like I said, I was perfectly happy to go along. I just fervently hope no one came away from this book believing this is what is meant by “theory of evolution.”

Eclectic, engaging subject matter. A bit of pleasant but deeply fluffy intellectual masturbation tacked around the edges for an excuse. Wonderful writing. A good time, all around.

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Jul 30, 2008 Alexandra rated it 1 of 5 stars

I couldn't get into this book at all and gave up reading it after the first chapter. The premise was a good one, but Pollan's writing style drove me up the wall. I called it quits when he started analogizing Johnny Appleseed and Dionysius. Too much navel-gazing and not enough substance.

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Oct 20, 2011 Amit rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, science-writing, nature

If the science books I have read reveal science writers, then Pollan is among the top three! Here is Pollan cleverly asking the reader to think of plants not as any vegetative material that we gulp down, kick off the ground, and cut down daily, but as species - just like us. The question he asks is this - if a human and a plant were JUST two species in the Darwinian world of struggle for survival, then didn't the Potato do a better job at being fruitful and multiply, or perhaps outright world do...more

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Sep 04, 2011 Dolly rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: fans of non-fiction

Shelves: 2011, nonfiction, other-usa, new-england, native-american, science, the-netherlands, ocean-seashore, english, gardens-flowers, russia, virginia, religion-philosophy, hawaiiana, ireland-irish, afghanistan

After reading The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, I was determined to read more by Michael Pollan. It took me three years to get around to reading this book, but I'm glad I finally did. It's a bit more metaphysical than the other books I've read by him, but still very informative and interesting. I was fascinated by his exploration of the four different kinds of plants and the human desires sated by each. And I was amused by his continual revisitation of the Dionysus/Apollo...more After reading The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, I was determined to read more by Michael Pollan. It took me three years to get around to reading this book, but I'm glad I finally did. It's a bit more metaphysical than the other books I've read by him, but still very informative and interesting. I was fascinated by his exploration of the four different kinds of plants and the human desires sated by each. And I was amused by his continual revisitation of the Dionysus/Apollo metaphor throughout the book.

interesting quotes:
"So the question arose in my mind that day: Did I choose to plant these potatoes, or did the potato make me do it? In fact, both statements are true...Yet evolution consists of an infinitude of trivial, unconscious events, and in the evolution of the potato my reading of a particular seed catalog on a particular January evening counts as one of them." (p. xv)

"Domesticated species don't command our respect the way their wild cousins often do. Evolution may reward interdependence, but our thinking selves continue to prize self-reliance. The wolf is somehow more impressive than the dog. Yet there are fifty million dogs in America today, only ten thousand wolves. So what does the dog know about getting along in this world that its wild ancestor doesn't? The big thing the dog knows about-the subject matter it has mastered in the ten thousand years it has been evolving at our side-is us: our needs and desires, our emotions and values, all of which it has folded into its genes as part of a sophisticated strategy for survival." (pp. xvi-xvii)

"The four desires I explore here are sweetness, broadly defined, in the story of the apple;beauty in the tulip's;intoxication in the story of cannibis; and control in the story of the potato-specifically, in the story of a genetically altered potato I grew in my garden to see where the ancient arts of domestication may now be headed. (p. xviii)

"Every wild apple shrub excites our expectations thus," Thoreau wrote, "somewhat as every wild child. It is, perhaps, a prince in disguise. What a lesson to man!...Poets and philosophers and statesmen thus spring up in the country pastures, and outlast the hosts of unoriginal men." (p. 45)

"Symmetry is an unmistakable sign that there's relevant information in a place. That's because symmetry is a property shared by a relatively small number of things in the landscape, all of them of keen interest to us. The shortlist of nature's symmetricals includes other creatures, other people (most notably the faces of other people), human artifacts, and plants--but especially flowers. Symmetry is also a sign of health in a creature, since mutations and environmental stresses can easily disturb it. So paying attention to symmetrical things makes good sense: symmetry is usually significant." (p. 76)

"Though we self-importantly regard domestication as something people have done to plants, it is at the same time a strategy by which the plants have exploited us and our desires--even our most idiosyncratic notions of beauty--to advance their own interests.
Depending on the environment in which a species finds itself, different adaptations will avail. Mutations that nature would have rejected out of hand in the wild sometimes prove to be brilliant adaptations in an environment that's been shaped by human desire." (p. 81)

"Although by any conventional measure it is folly to pay thousands for a tulip bulb (or for that matter an Internet stock), as long as there is an even greater fool out there willing to pay even more, doing so is the most logical thing in the world." (p. 103)

"Yet this new biotechnology has overthrown the old rules governing the relationship of nature and culture in a plant. Domestication has never been a simple one-way process in which our species has controlled others; other species participate only so far as their interests are served, and many plants (such as the oak) simply sit the whole game out. That game is the one Darwin called 'artificial selection,' and its rules have never been any different from the ones that govern natural selection. The plant in its wildness proposes new qualities, and then man (or, in the case of natural selection, nature) selects which of those qualities will survive and prosper. But about one rule Darwin was emphatic; as he wrote in The Origin of Species, 'Man does not actually produce variability.' Now he does." (p. 196)

"Yet for reasons we don't completely understand, distinct species do exist in nature, and they exhibit a certain genetic integrity--sex between them, when it does occur, doesn't produce fertile offspring. Nature presumably has some reason for erecting these walls, even if they are permeable on occasion. Perhaps, as some biologists believe, the purpose of keeping species separate is to put barriers in the path of pathogens, to contain their damage so that a single germ can't wipe out life on Earth at a stroke." (pp. 196-197)

"This is, of course, how chemical companies have always handled the problem of pest resistance: by simply introducing a new and improved pesticide every few years. With any luck, the effectiveness of the last one will expire around the same time its patent does." (p. 215)

"As much as I love the firm grasp and cerebral order of spring, there's a ripe, almost sensual pleasure in its August abandonment, too." (p. 240)

new words: pomace, ramifying, mergansers, synecdoche, muntins, chthonic

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Aug 18, 2010 Jafar rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is quite an interesting book. Pollan chooses four different plants and associates them with four different human desires, and then he presents a fascinating account of each plant-desire duo. There’s a host of good and interesting information in the book not only on human nature and botany, but history as well. What moved this book from three to four stars for me was the writing. There are passages in the book that are quite a joy to read if you don’t really care that much for the subject ma...more

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Jan 27, 2008 Jenn rated it 3 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Mar 13, 2008 Frances rated it 4 of 5 stars

This was a really great read, and I've never really liked Botany or had much of a green thumb. Pollan covers botany well, but he also brings in history, philosophy, neuroscience, economics and many other fields of interest in this study of 4 plants: apples, tulips, marijuana, and potatoes. As far as non-fiction books go, I can't imagine it being any better.

Many other reviewers have complained that he did not stick to his argument that plants, by catering to human desires, actually manipulate hum...more

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Dec 09, 2007 Elfscribe rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: anyone who likes history, natural science

In highly readable prose, Michael Pollan explores the ways four different plants have influenced human culture and history and in turn been influenced by human manipulation. These plants are the apple tree, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato. In four different essays,he defines our relationship with these plants in terms of how they fulfill a human desire: apples = sweetness, tulip = beauty, marijuana = intoxication, and potato = control. The stories of these plants are absolutely fascinating...more

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Nov 27, 2007 emily rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people who eat

i enjoyed this book, but i didn't find it as interesting as _the omnivore's dilemma_. but then, you can't win 'em all, can you? as with _the OD_, the last chapter (potatoes) was the most fascinating, making me feel like i really never want to eat potatoes again, unless i know their origin.

this is a little off the subject, but the more i read the more i want to leave the united states. what is wrong with us here? seriously. i mean, we let corporations like monsanto use us as guinea pigs so that...more

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Sep 21, 2007 Jennifer rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction, conscious-living

Michael Pollan constantly forces me to rethink my relationship with nature and society. He writes without ever feeling dogmatic, yet is able to shed some harsh light on aspects of our relationship with nature and each other that we shouldn't ignore.

The book is broken up into four different plants and an associated human desire that helped shape them; the apple:sweetness, the tulip: beauty, marijuana: intoxication, and the potato: control.

Of course, none of these plants were truly shaped by one...more

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Sep 03, 2007 Manderson rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

In a kind of a meandering, relaxed writing style, Michael Pollan tells the tale of apples, tulips, cannabis, and potatoes and their co-evolution with human desire. Although I agree somewhat with his premise---that plants also influence human desires, not just vice versa---I never found that he fully developed a convincing proof of it. Rather, he just gently threads a tangential narrative about his subjects, as if he were having a conversation with you in his study while looking out the window a...more

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Sep 01, 2007 Sharon rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

Really interesting (if at times stretched to fit) hypothesis that plants have exerted their own influence on humans to propagate the species.

The book was uneven at times, and the best chapters in my mind were the apple (sweetness) and the potato (control). Who knew that all modern apple trees are descendants of a single tree of their type, grafted an infinite number of times – that if planted from seed each apple tree would produce its own distinct variety? The chapter on the potato was terrify...more

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Dec 10, 2007 Luke rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: ecology-philosophy-and-ethics

The Botany of Desire was written in language that made it obvious that Michael Pollan likes to hear himself write. His ideas were interesting, following four plants, the potato, cannabis, the apple, and the tulip through their journey with mankind. I like how he approaches the topic, observing not only what people have done to the plants to develop them to our own use, but also how the plants have in some ways used us for their own ends. It is true that we, while we think we are masters of our o...more

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Jan 27, 2009 Dani rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2009-books

This book was incredibly thought provoking - you'll think about our (human) relationship with food and plants in a whole new way. The first chapter of the book that dealt with apples and the desire for sweetness was too much about Jonny Appleseed in my opinion. Yes, he was an important figure, but I got bored and wanted to know more about the worldwide history and appeal of the apple. The rest of the sections were much better, my favorite being the potato (the tulip was fabulous as well). If you...more

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Jul 14, 2007 kate rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I found this book very interesting. I don't normally like reading nonfiction, but The Botany of Desire blends history, memoir, and science with an easy conversational tone. I never felt like I was being talked down to (my complaint for other popular science/nonfiction books); instead, it was as though author Michael Pollan had sat down to talk with me and had really cool things to say. The book associates four plants with their abilities to satisfy human desires and impulses -- the apple with s...more

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Jun 15, 2007 Drew Larson rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people with an interest in history, food, and plants.

Shelves: relaxingnon-fiction

I am a big fan of Michael Pollan, and would recommend his works to any friend who enjoys a mix of history, politics, food, and the natural world. This is not his best work, but it is still pretty good. The book follows four plants and discusses how they reflect human desires, and vice versa. The plants/desire combinations, if I remember them correctly, included: beauty/tulip, sweetness/apple, intoxication/marijuana, and control/potato.

While some of Mr. Pollan's arguments occasionally require a...more

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Oct 14, 2007 Meg rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction

The author adds a wrinkle to our thoughts about domestication by arguing that plants have selected for a preference for their qualities in humans, leading to their cultivation, ensuring their survival. Rather than us manipulating the traits of our crops, we've been manipulated by them!

Though I disagree with this premise (you can never determine an evolutionary reason for something, and it's hardly parsimonious to think of organisms acting as agents of selection on our perceptions of them (and ho...more

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About Michael Pollan

Michael Pollan is an American author, journalist, activist, and professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is also the director of the Knight Program in Science and Environmental Journalism.

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Books by Michael Pollan

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

A Place of My Own: The Education of an Amateur Builder

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“For it is only by forgetting that we ever really drop the thread of time and approach the experience of living in the present moment, so elusive in ordinary hours.” — 14 people liked it

“Sooner or later your fingers close on that one moist-cold spud that the spade has accidentally sliced clean through, shining wetly white and giving off the most unearthly of earthly aromas. It's the smell of fresh soil in the spring, but fresh soil somehow distilled or improved upon, as if that wild, primordial scene has been refined and bottled: eau de pomme de terre. You can smell the cold inhuman earth in it, but there's the cozy kitchen to, for the smell of potatoes is, at least by now, to us, the smell of comfort itself, a smell as blankly welcoming as spud flesh, a whiteness that takes up memories and sentiments as easily as flavors. To smell a raw potato is to stand on the very threshold of the domestic and the wild. (241)” — 12 people liked it

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