Michael Pollan

Focusing on the human relationship with plants, the author of Second Nature uses botany to explore four basic human desires--sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control--through portraits of four plants that embody them: the apple, tulip, marijuana, and potato. 100,000 first printing.

A Plant's-eye View of the World

The Botany of Desire

Andrew John Kinney

Michael Pollan has convinced me to buy only organic potatoes from now on.

The Botany of Desire is a book which presages two of Pollan’s later books, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and How to Change Your Mind; the other two books were written later, and are better books, in my opinion. That said, there is much to learn in reading the Botany of Desire (BoD, hereinafter). Pollan, like me, is a gardener, so I have common beliefs on many issues touching land use and food; anyone who has gardened for a long time comes to understand soil and ecology, and Pollan clearly does. 

BoD is divided in four sections: Apples, Tulips, Marijuana, and Potatoes. The section on potatoes was clearly the basis for, or dry run for The Omnivore’s Dilemma, but Omnivore’s Dilemma is a better treatment of modern agriculture in general, as well as organic farming and its uses. I will say the recitation of pesticides and herbicides that get dumped on standard potato crops is scary; one farmer said that after application of one of the more potent pesticides, he does not go into the fields for five days for any reason, and he does not allow his employees to do so. Also, the use of GMO plants with built-in pesticides like bt (bacillus thuringiensis) engineered into their DNA is frightening, especially given the now widely known worldwide decline of insects. Pollan’s point, which is perhaps better made in Omnivore’s Dilemma, is that it doesn’t have to be this way; for a slightly higher price we could have organic produce, or at least we could have far less chemically treated produce. 

The other point Pollan makes, both with regard to potatoes and apples is that clones (which is what all the varieties of spuds and apples are) are more susceptible to insect pests and eventually lose vigor. Remember the term, “hybrid vigor”? Clones don’t have it, because, well, they’re clones, not hybrids.

The section on marijuana is interesting, but Pollan covered the same ground much more comprehensively in How to Change Your Mind. 

The section on tulips mostly was uninteresting to me because it was more about the tulip “bubble” in Holland in the 1600’s than about gardening or plants, and I could have learned all I wanted to know about “tulipmania” in three or four paragraphs, versus the twenty or more pages spent on it. Also, I’ll admit that as a gardener I dislike tulips. One could create a plastic replica of a tulip that has as much interest to me; I don’t like formal gardens. There was some interesting stuff in this section about how plants have evolved to attract pollinators (bees, mostly).

As for apples, that part was interesting, and I learned some things I did not know, though perhaps a bit more than I wanted to about Johnny Appleseed.

So my recommendation is to read The Omnivore’s Dilemma to learn about food, and How to Change Your Mind to learn about psychoactive drugs; both are excellent books. If you read those two, you can decide for yourself whether you would like the added information available in BoD. As always, Pollan’s prose is engaging, and he clearly has studied in depth the subjects he is writing about, though sometimes he tells the reader a bit more than is absolutely necessary. Three and a half stars.

Jeni Enjaian

Michael Pollan presented an intriguing concept in this book, studying five different types of plants and giving a mini biography of sorts. However, he does have the - at times - annoying tendency to get up on a moral high horse and/or get lost in his own theoretical musings. (One of the plants that he profiled was marijuana. Perhaps he sampled a bit too much as he wrote this book.)
The lack of coherency and overall direction was what tipped the scales for me. I have learned to deal with a little bit of Pollan's (food) moral high handedness but this book was simply incoherent for the most part. There's not a lot that can salvage that. I would not recommend this book.

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

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