The Botany of Desire

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. Due to this, his apples tasted different because apples grown from an apple seed were very different than an ordinary apple. The

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

Are we manipulated by plants or are we manipulating the plants? In The Botany of Desire by Micheal Pollan, he explains that plants play a bigger role in their own evolution than we normally realize. “..we’re prone to overestimate our own agency in nature” (xxi). Plants cannot just simply get up and run away from their prey; so they formulate substances that repel their prey. Plants are not like humans; sometimes it is difficult for people to appreciate their full sophistication and complexity.

Potato: Control Sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control. These are the four topics of desire that Michael Pollan talks about within his memoirs in The Botany of Desire. All four desires are told through powerful euphemisms in relation to plants that we have come to know as domesticated. In regards to our modern relationship with plants, the apple, tulip, marijuana, and potato are perhaps some of our most treasured allies. This could not be truer than that relationship in which we have with

In the novel, The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan tells the intriguing story of how plants are domesticated from the perspective of the plant with regards to four specific plants.. The four plants he chose for discussion are the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato. As he discusses the domestication of these plants, his overall focus is the desire that each of these plants have to us as humans. Pollan has written books and magazine articles among other pieces of literature that discuss the

Book Analysis: The Botany of Desire In the novel The Botany of Desire, there are four main topics that are discussed in the book. The main emphasis that the author is trying to make in the novel is that there is a connection/ relationship between humans and plants. In the novel the author explains that apple trees, tulips, marijuana, and potatoes have a distinguished effect on human desires such as sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control respectively. The author also explains that by having

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

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

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

people into a frenzy and showing the volatility of financial markets. The symbiotic relationship between humans and plants has always been thought to benefit humans, but what if in fact the desire behind plants, in this case the tulip, is their driving force for survival? In the book The Botany of Desire, the author Michael Pollan hypothesizes that tulips have developed an evolutionary design to enhance beauty, making them constantly desirable and reproducible. Although tulips serve no practical