Book Analysis: The Botany Of Desire

In the beginning of the story, it

Pollan begins by telling the story of the lives of four plants. The theme he tries to keep throughout the novel is that “human desires connect us to these plants.” One of the theories he states is that the plant has to want to work with us just as much as we want to work with it. Through the stories of the four plants, he tells of the experiences

Part Four: What does this quotation mean? Why is it significant? How does it connect to an emerging theme of the novel? What is the impact of this passage on the reader?

multiple times within the novel, and the author uses this to reveal the importance of their

Every garden has their own purposes that make gardeners devote a great amount of time to take care of them. Gardeners are coming up with their own unique ways of taking care of their gardens, especially when they make profits out of it. In his book, The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan claims the best gardeners of his generation have devoted themselves to growing cannabis, popularly known as marijuana. Intrigued with Pollan’s argument, I completely agree with him. Marijuana growers are the best gardeners because they perfected the plant in growing them indoors, they make good business out of it, and the plant itself fills the need of humans for transcendent altered states of consciousness.

In the beginning of the novel, O’Brien introduces his first character,

In the middle of the novel, the motif

We are keeping our food reliable through the use of GMOs. GMOs can provide food that can be helpful for conditions in the world. They can be manufactured to fit to threatening conditions, such as drought. They can also be used to withstand diseases that have the potential to cause famine. Blights can cost millions in damages, and with new resistance technology being tested we could save millions of dolars and millions of crops. "Blight-resistant potatoes would be one of the first major foods genetically engineered to incorporate defenses against plant diseases, which annually destroy some 15 percent of the world’s agricultural harvest." These foods can even be modified to prevent bugs from consuming or ruining a crop yield. This resistance to famine can help us become less concerned about starvation due to unfavorable conditions. The crop yield can remain the same. Those opposed to GMOs may claim that they increase pestacides and harm the environment. This is completely false. "It is a matter of fact that GM crops have drastically cut the use of such pesticides. GM cotton, containing a built in insecticide, uses 50% less chemical insecticides. In 1998 around 1000 tonnes less insecticide was used in the US cotton belt than before the introduction of GM cotton. That insecticide was mainly sprayed from planes. Only a small percentage reached its target. The rest drifted into the wider environment killing

In the novel

During the beginning of the novel

The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollen uses examples of four plants including the apple ,tulip, marijuana, and the potato, to describe evolution and how mankind works to help plants reproduce. We are a slave to things of sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control. These four things are described by the different plant chapters in the book. We as people are driven to these kind of things because of the product we get, we subconsciously are working to make these plants more fit and therefore helping in their reproduction and evolution. With each plant chapter Pollen goes into depth about its contribution to the world and history behind the plant within human evolution. By using the examples he provides in the book helps demonstrate the ideas of how these plants contribute to the human body systems, evolution and ecology. To further explain these topics I chose to explore the apple, tulip and cannabis plants.

The first example of this situation in the book would be in chapter 3 of the book. This quote is from a time in the story when

Botany of Desire Summary The botany of desire, written by Michael Pollan, discusses botany into four particular sections: sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control. The first section is about the sweetness of an apple and he tells us the journey of the apple. Pollan talks about an apple grower named John Chapman and how he grew his apples by planting apple seeds.

In the beginning of the book,

He said Tropical Race Four attacked Australia 's favorite banana plant, the Cavendish, completely."It is caused by a fungus in the soil called Fusarium and causes the leaves to wilt and rots the inside of the plant," Professor Dale said (“QUT-News”). Without introducing GMOs, bananas would have been hard to come by and expensive at that. Also since plants can become resistant to insects this mean less need for pesticides. With this great news of less chemicals being used, it lowers the chance of them running off into rivers or other protected areas (“Ciment”). And, in some cases, GM crops can offer things that traditional crops cannot-such as, higher levels of vitamins in grains such as rice. There is currently a type of rice that was created, and now is being evaluated by China, that contains Vitamin A (“GM Approval Database”). In many developing countries children suffer from vitamin A deficiencies, that lead to blindness, and can be fatal (“Maria”). Introducing these advanced crops can help to save some lives by providing children and adults with much needed nutrition. Swiss researchers also have created a strain of golden rice that contains extra beta-carotene. This is an antioxidant that is good for the eyes and skin. Researches also have designed bruise-free potatoes that are expected to cut down on cancer-causing chemicals created when potatoes are fried.