The Botany Of Desire Summary

The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan is an interesting perspective of how humans over the centuries have filled certain desires through the use of plants. The apple represents the desire for sweetness, the tulip for beauty, marijuana for intoxication, and the potato for control. Pollan discusses the point and importance of these four plants and their development throughout history. Chapter 1: Desire: Sweetness/ Plant: The Apple This chapter goes into depth talking about the spread of the apple in the United States, and all over the world.

Eugenia Collier, the author of Marigolds evokes empathy in the audience to inspire action and bring about a deeper understanding of the world by using first person point of view in her text, so she used Lizabeth an imaginary person to tell a story from her point of view. She uses Lizabeth as the narrator of the story, so Lizabeth tells a story about her life experience in dusty depression-era town. In the text where it mentions “whatever verve, there was left in her, whatever was of love and beauty and joy that had…. Awkward and ashamed”(Lizabeth 62-63) and “She never planted marigolds again….. And I too have planted marigolds”(Lizabeth 64), she is trying to describe something. She is trying to describe that the marigolds brought happiness

Foreign nationals bring with them the tastes and delights from their own country. Presently, Americans have such a wide selection of foods to choose from including but not limited to Mexican, Chinese, Italian, Greek, Thai, and Japanese. In the agricultural industry, researchers have taken domestic plants and bred them with international plants to create a more desirable embryonic plant which grows to have only the best characteristics of the two plants. This idealistic technology wouldn't have been deemed possible if it wasn't subject to the vast array of cultural diversity to challenge the standard characteristics of domestic vegetations.

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.

Potatoes became a staple in the diet of many as they were discovered around the world. They are still an important part of the diet of many today. ("International year of," 2008)

Introduced to Europe in the mid 1500s, potatoes were able to strongly impact European lives. They originally grew in Peru but spread throughout South America and later in Europe. Potatoes were able to thrive in Ireland, Scandinavia, Germany, and Poland. Potatoes were able to feed many people and improve food supply. The potato was able to supply a steady amount of calories and nutrients which was able to provide a better life for people of the Old World. Potatoes quickly spread throughout Europe and became an important crop. Today people still use the potato for food and other uses such as making stamps and soothing headaches. When growing potatoes today, many diseases can occur. Some include early and late blight, potato scab, and bacterial ring rot.

Michael Pollan, author of The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s View of the World, addresses four major plant groups that have both changed for human needs and simultaneously changed human’s needs. While most gardeners, genetic engineers and other plant related professionals have long-believed that plants have evolved based on what we want or need to survive and in other words what we have “domesticated”, Pollan appeals to the plant’s view. Plants’ survival has been solely based on what humans desire both depending on their visual and stimulatory appeal along with their appeal to an appetite. Conversely, plants have used humans as a strategy for “getting us to move and think for them (page xx)”. Many plants have successfully maneuvered humans for

Like tulips and other plants and vegetables such as corn, potatoes and others have evolved over the ten-thousand years  species. Corn is the most valuable and will remain the most important crop of the world out of all the foods corn sells out the most. Pollan thinks it's impossible to offer and purchase corn and has turned out to be utilized a lot as a procedure of feeding animals and giving them too much corn as food ultimately, Pollan is letting us know that we have to switch up what we have chosen we would need to eat as a general public. Corn, as Pollan depicts, has been sustained cash from the administration much so it can be overloaded to the creatures we eat each day that are hurt because of its absence. He believes  the contention that corn is devastating our

In the book, Botany of desire, chapter 2, Michael Pollan describes the relationship between humans and tulips in 17th century. At the beginning of the chapter, Michael introduces the tulips and then, he start talking about the big event happened in Dutch. It is the most typical case of bubble economy, and it made a lot of impact.

Without policies to guarantee proper care, use reasonable access to soil, we would have further limitations to access of crops and in turn, less access to sustainable food sources. Without the governing oversight of laws and policies, we would likely be living in a country looking at “increased poverty, hunger, conflict, land grabs, and mass migration of displaces populations” (Montanerella, 2015). There are many concerns that may arise when developing and enforcing agricultural policies, but if policies are not made to improve standards, technology, maintain diversity and preserve water, we would be apt to face devastating effects. Some of the major concerns involved with agricultural policy include: biosecurity, labor supply, technology, water access, water trades, and

Most of the time there is a moment in life where one realizes they have lost all innocence and gained some compassion.  “Marigolds” shows how one young girl transferred from a child to young adult through her life experiences.  Throughout this story another young, but at the same time old in her prime, lady’s experiences are revealed:  the author’s.  In this short story, “Marigolds,” Eugenia Collier’s subconscious is unmasked through symbolism, diction, and Lizabeth’s actions.

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.

The book I chose is titled The Evolution Of Desire by David M. Buss In this book the author explores the concepts of human mating in general, and breaks down what separates the men from women in terms of mating desires. He strives to understand what each gender uses to find, acquire and ultimately keep a mate. The author theorizes that the origin of today 's human mating behavior is directly linked to our evolutionary past. Some of thee main points were that while women prefer a older, healthy and intelligent man who is ambitious, with high social status and strongly built. Most men on average simply prefer young, physically attractive woman.

The potato seems to us today to be such a staple food that it is hard to believe that it has only been accepted as edible by most of the Western world for the past 200 years. Our story begins thousands of years ago, in South America—Peru,

New farming methods came to use during late 16th century. Farmers in many parts of Europe, including Ireland, France, started to raise potatoes. A plant from the “New World”, that for a long tome was seen with a big suspiciousness. A higher rate of potato