Free Essays, Term Papers, Research Papers at Anti Essays

Michael Pollan's interesting treatise The Botany of Desire is a four-part examination of mankind's interaction with plants, with its main premise that man and domesticated plants have formed a symbiotic link of the same kind enjoyed by flowers and bees.

Pollan examines four specific plants in his exploration of this theme. Sweetness (the apple), Beauty (the tulip), Intoxication (marijuana) and Control (the potato) are all desires of man that are satisfied by plants. For each desire, Pollan makes his case that man and plant have mutually adjusted each other. So, as the cover text asks, "who is really domesticating whom?"

The four plants whose stories this book tells are what we call "domesticated species," a rather one-sided term... that leaves the erroneous impression that we're in charge. We automatically think of domestication as something we do to other species, but it makes just as much sense to think of it as something certain plants and animals have done to us, a clever evolutionary strategy for advancing their own interests. The species that have spent the last ten thousand or so years figuring out how best to feel, heal, clothe, intoxicate and otherwise delight us have made themselves some of nature's greatest success stories.
—Introduction to The Botany of Desire


Sweetness: Once, sweetness stood for all that satisfied desire: wholesomeness, freshness, fertility and purity. Women, good farm plots, economies and philosophies were "sweet" to the extent that they were productive and good. Even now, though sweetness has lost most of its power, it is still a highly desired quality for food, especially fruit. Pollan tells the story of the apple tree, from its roots in Eurasia as a bitter shrub to its spread across the American frontier by John Chapman (Johnny Appleseed) in an early American capitalist success story.

Beauty: The tale of man's desire for botanical beauty is told...