1001 Books for Every Mood - Readers Guide

The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan

We know our pets train us as much as we train them, but what about plants? Pollan looks at the co-evolution of people with four plants, each linked to a fundamental human desire: apples (sweetness), tulips (beauty), marijuana (intoxication), and potatoes (control). Pollan won Borders Original Voice Award for this book in 2001.
-1001 Books for Every Mood

Readers Guide by Barbara Fournier

Overview

The Botany of Desire is a story about our relationship with plants. Do plants use us as much as we use them?

The author examines four plants that satisfy different human needs: the apple (for sweetness), the tulip (for beauty), marijuana (for psychoactive purposes) and the potato (a food that is ideal for genetic engineering). What is the true story of Johnny Appleseed (did you know apples were used primarily for hard cider?). What was "tulip fever" and how did it bankrupt thousands of people? Why the war on drugs, particularly on marijuana? And would you eat a potato that has been genetically inbred with pesticides (you probably already have!)? The Botany of Desire is a wonderful book to read, think about and discuss with others.

Discussion Questions

1. Pollan asks, “Did I choose to plant these potatoes, or did the potato make me do it?” Talk about the plants you cultivate in your garden. Are they using you to help them survive? Are you like a honeybee?

2. Pollan picked four plants that we have domesticated and have, in a sense, remade us; the apple (for sweetness), the tulip (for beauty), marijuana (for intoxication) and the potato (for genetic variability). Are there others you would include?

3. What had you heard about Johnny Appleseed? What surprised you about the real story?

4. Did you know that apples were originally cultivated for hard cider?

5. How many different varieties of apples can you name? How many have you actually tried – and which is your favorite? Why have the Delicious, the Macintosh and the Granny Smith outsold their competitors?

6. Pollan is concerned that we will lose many other wonderful varieties because they are not as portable. Is there a farm near you where you can go and sample some of these more unusual apples?

7. What was “Tulipmania” in the 1630’s in Holland? Is there a modern commodity that might undergo a similar fate (“the greater fool theory”)?

8. Pollan discusses tulip “breaks” which occur when a virus causes a tulip to be multi-colored. Since the virus weakened the bulb, however, these tulips were destroyed and people lost a truly beautiful flower. What other plants have been eliminated or drastically compromised for better profits or ease of growing?

9. Pollan writes that “As a result of the war against cannabis, Americans are demonstrably less free today”. Why has our government chosen to wage war on drugs and why in particular this drug? Might it be because it affects the social order – or we think it may? Do you think we need to more carefully discriminate between the cannabis that creates hemp (with little psychoactive powers) and that strain that has high levels of psychoactive properties?

10. Pollan points out that two historical misperceptions have contributed to our suspicion of cannabis – the first that it caused murderous feelings in Assassins and the second that it was somehow involved in satanic rituals. Neither of these is true. Why then have we continued to demonize the plant?

11. Pollan points out that “there isn’t a people on Earth that doesn’t use psychoactive plants to effect a change in consciousness”. Sometimes this usage is related to religion or religious feelings, or to help us forget the past and live in the present. In your experience, is this why people use drugs? What other things might people get out of drug use?

12. Pollan writes about the genetically engineered potato (the NewLeaf). Is genetic engineering a good thing? Is it different from the kind of genetic engineering people have done to plants for centuries?

13. How did the Irish Potato Famine happen? Are we at risk for losing entire species of plants because of a lack of genetic variability?

14. Pollan has to decide whether it is safer to eat the genetically engineered NewLeaf potato or a recently dug up Russett potato that has been treated with the usual amount of pesticides. He decides the NewLeaf is safer because he knows pesticides are poisonous. Do you agree?

15. Why, then, does he end up refusing to use NewLeaf potatoes for a potluck dinner?

16. Has this chapter changed the way you look at organic produce? At genetically engineered produce?

17. Pollan ends with a point about the important of biodiversity and how it is often in conflict with the monoculture that follows from the profit motive. Are there ways that we as citizens can encourage biodiversity and should we do so?

About the Author

Michael Pollan teaches at UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and has been writing about the natural world and food since the 1980s. He was among of the first to observe how easily Americans succub to the whims of the latest fad diet or food craze. In an interview with Truthdig, he commented on what inspired him to write this book:

To read the newspaper over the last couple of years is to read one story after another that makes you wonder if the way you’ve been eating all these years is such a good idea—for yourself or the planet or the animals. Just reading the coverage of mad cow disease was an incredible educational experience. For example, we read that you’ve got to stop feeding cows to cows. It’s like, “What? We’ve been feeding cows to cows?” And we’ve got to tighten up those rules about feeding chicken litter to cows. “We’ve been feeding chicken crap to cows?” If you read those stories, it made me realize that the system by which we’re producing our food is not one I feel very good about participating in.

If You Liked This...

Here are some books to try next.

Also by Michael Pollan--

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
The Omnivore's Dilemma
Second Nature: A Gardener's Education

Books about what we eat--

Seeds of Change: Six Plants that Transformed Mankind by Henry Hobhouse
What to Eat by Marion Nestle
The Man Who Ate Everyting by Jeffrey Steingarten"
Books by Mark Kurlansky (Salt or Cod or The Big Oyster)
Books by M.F.K. Fisher (e.g. The Art of Eating)

Barbara Fournier, PhD

Barbara Fournier teaches psychology at Curry College in Milton, MA. Her areas of specialization include cognitive and emotional development of children and adolescents. She is an avid and nearly omnivorous reader.