Second Semester Book Review Katie Powell

The Botany of desire by Michael Pollan is a book about the relationship between plants and humans through the views of four very unique plants: the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato. Each plant represents a certain desire. The apple represents sweetness, the tulip: beauty, marijuana: intoxication, and the potato: control. The book focuses on how the plants have played upon and manipulated these human desires as an evolutionary strategy to further their species. The apple focused a lot of the discoveries that Johnny Appleseed made and how he spread apples all over the U.S. and how the apples started out bitter and were good for cider. After prohibition though people started selecting apples for their sweetness, and the apples became sweeter, redder, and crisper; a winning move for them. The tulip focuses on the beauty that they hold, and just the beauty. He focuses mainly on Holland and many royal gardens that highly regarded tulips and how the tulips adapted their beauty to keep being planted. The chapter about marijuana focuses on the fact that it makes itself desirable for it’s mind-altering qualities. The potato chapter talks about how the potato has made itself likable by humans by being able to be genetically altered and controlled. The entire book boils down to one simple point: plants use us to distribute themselves and keep their species alive, not the other way around.

Overall the book was very good and I liked it. His writing style is very conversational so it goes along pretty quickly. It’s also a pretty a short book. At times he gets repetitive or focuses on one thing for too long but overall it’s good. He successfully accomplished writing a book about plants without making it overly scientific and hard to read. It really showed the human-plant relationship from a different perspective. If I thought it before the book I really would of said that I put bamboo in my room because I like bamboo. The bamboo should be grateful to me because I’m in control. Michael Pollan looks at from the perspective that that type of bamboo has adapted to human wants and needs and used us in order to succeed. I would suggest this book because it gives you a new perspective on the apple in your lunch bag or the vines covering your house or the flowers in your garden.