He masterfully links four fundamental human desires—sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control—with the plants that satisfy them: the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato..
Chapter 2 Summary: “Desire: Beauty/Plant: The Tulip”
Pollan recalls discounting the tulip's beauty when he planted them in his parents' garden as a kid.
Three-and-a-half centuries earlier, tulips ignited a madness in Holland between 1634 and 1637, when the tulip took “a star turn on history's main stage” (63)..
Chapter 4 Summary: “Desire: Control/Plant: The Potato”
The garden is a place to try techniques before using them on an entire farm.
Pollan decided to plant NewLeaf potatoes, which were genetically engineered by the company Monsanto to produce their own insecticides..
The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World (2001) examines the intricate evolutionary relationship between plant cultivation and human desire.
Author Michael Pollan explores this relationship by recounting the history of four plants that have been cultivated to meet four distinct human longings..
But The Botany Of Desire is different.
Published in 2001, it's one of his oldest books, and it proposes a very intriguing idea: that plants use and control us as much as we use and control them.
Here are 3 lessons that will change how you look at plants forever: Plants use humans and animals because they can't move..
Book overview
He masterfully links four fundamental human desires—sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control—with the plants that satisfy them: the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato..
