Whether you're a gardener
who gardens or a gardener who reads about gardening, (or just
a reader) you'll want to track down a copy of Michael Pollan's
Botany of Desire, A Plant's-Eye View of the World (Random
House, $24.95). Botany of Desire is Pollan's second book-length
foray into gardening.
His first, the prizewinning
Second Nature: A Gardener's Education, published back in
1992, was called a modern-day Walden and a funny read. In the
new book, the enviromental philosopher picks up where he left
off in a laid-back, witty musing about the complex coevolution
of humans and plants. To tell this story, Pollan selects four
plants: apple, tulip, marijuana, and potato. Along the way, he
delves into subjects as varied as, well, nature.
Social history stops
include colorful images of early American settlers pushing into
the Northwest Territory, the Irish potato famine, the Ottoman
Empire's obsession with tulips and seventeenth-century Amsterdam's
cravings for beauty. The science of botany is revealed through
stories about Monsanto's tinkering with biogenetics, visits to
potato farms in Idaho and Peru as well as high tech marijuana
grow-rooms in Amsterdam. Parts of the book deals with the discovery
of THC in cannabis and cannabinoids in the human brain, and the
virus that doomed the tulips.
The author doesn't
overlook psychology and spirituality. His tales frequently summon
figures in Greek mythology, traces psychoactive plants to the
origin of religion, and examine and explores what it's like to
alter one's consciousness.
Using anecdotes and
colorful imagery, Pollan spins his modern-day tales with a moral.
The apple, tulip, and potato stories argue persuasively for biodiversity
and expose the dangers of monoculture. The high tech path of the
potato raises serious questions about genetic engineering that
cannot be dismissed. After the discourse on the marijuana plant,
the reader is left wondering what the fuss is all about.
What's intriguing about
Pollan's approach is that he considers the plant's point of view,
portraying humans as unwitting partners working in the service
of plants. For instance, he asks, is domestication something we
do to other species or "something certain plants and animals have
done to us, a clever evolutionary strategy for advancing their
own interests." For each of the four chosen plants, he asks what
did the plant get in return for their bargain with humans?
The most important
and obvious benefit was dispersion, far and wide. In exchange
for sugar and cider (read alcohol) and Vitamin C, the apple was
repaid with untold new varieties and half a world of new habitat.
In much the same way, the potato provided nourishment in exchange
for new varieties, one with a ticking bomb, the genetic resistance
to the Colorado beetle. The tulip, highly malleable, made and
remade itself beautiful in human eyes. In return, "we multiplied
the flowers beyond reason, moving their seeds around the planet."
Marijuana provided us first with hemp fiber and then with its
medicinal and psychoactive powers. It also made possible amazing
insights into human consciousness. In the bargain, the most potent
plants were spread around the world.
The shift in perspective
from human to plant takes us from viewing nature as outside or
apart from us to being part of us. It also lets us examine
how the relationship between human and plant has changed both
parties, which is exactly what Pollan has done.
The author's storytelling
is that of an impatient essayist, flitting erratically here and
there like a bumblebee with too many flowers to choose from, leaving
the reader with lots of stops and starts in the narration.
That's not all that
surprising, once he explained his personal approach to observation
in the marijuana chapter: "My attention can't wait to beat a retreat
from the here and now to the abstract, frog-jumping from the data
of senses to conclusions." "Very often," he explains, "the conclusions
or concepts come first, allowing me to dispense with the sensory
data altogether or to notice in it only what fits."
By book's end, Pollan
accomplishes his goal of changing our perspective. We can't help
but look at ourselves
as the objects
of other species' designs and desires, as one of the newer bees
in Darwin's garden—ingenious, sometimes reckless, and remarkably
unselfconscious.
PBS
Interview with Michael Pollan
