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

by Michael Pollan

Goody offers two possible explanations for the absence of a culture of flowers in Africa, one economic, the other ecological. The economic explanation is that people can’t afford to pay attention to flowers until they have enough to eat; a well-developed culture of flowers is a luxury that most of Africa historically has not been able to support. The other explanation is that the ecology of Africa doesn’t offer a lot of flowers, or at least not a lot of showy ones. Relatively few of the world’s domesticated flowers have come from Africa, and the range of flower species on the continent is nowhere near as extensive as it is in, say, Asia or even North America.