How commonplace to see an apple, a tulip, marijuana, though maybe not as common, and potatoes. There does not seem to be anything excessively important about any one of these things, until you look through the lens of Michael Pollan's book The Botany of Desire. The creative meanderings of this writer's mind takes the reader on a journey through the history of each of these individual elements and the desires they represent in every light from the sacred to their demise.
The Apple, The story of sweetness
The apple has long since conjured imagery of the Garden of Eden, Johnny Appleseed, Americana, a vision of health that will keep the doctor away if you eat one a day. All of these ingrained images. How about if we flip the lens, as Pollan has done, and look at it through historical eyes as the apple traversed the desires of people for sweetness seldom found in days of old, as well as the drink, the wine of the Americas.
Humans, especially farmers, have worked to domesticate the wildling fruits and vegetables available to them for as long as they've understood how. Some things just will not play ball. Oak trees are one such species that refuses to conform on any level. Apple trees are so much more individual than I had ever known prior to reading this book.
The trees do not "come true" from seeds. A tree planted from a seed will not bear remarkable resemblance to its parent plant. It comes with its own identity, flavor, and temperament, much like humans. Apple trees can be broken, like wild horses, it seems, but their inherent nature is that of a wild, unpredictable fruit.
The sweetness is what first beheld the wanting for the fruit. Sweetness was once a rarity, a delicacy. There were not many things that naturally bore the innocent sweetness of an apple. Sugar. That first of intoxicants introduced to the human consciousness. The sweet tooth. The other derivative of sugar...alcohol.
Apples, not native to the Americas, were imported to the lands when settlers arrived here. Probably carried on the soles of one's shoes, the species had to do some evolving to survive here. The patron saint of the Apple story was a man by the name of John Chapman. He has been glamorized into the vision of Christianity, bearing the sweetness of forbidden fruit to the new world, when in reality, he was a great business man with an eye for the future and a quirk in his heart.
There is an abundance of folklore, his fame walked with him in his bare feet even in his living days. He was a legend in his own time. He got ahead of the progression westward across the continent, leaving apple orchards in his wake. He did so from seed, mostly, not from the grafting process employed so much today. The trees he procured were wild, to quote Pollan ""Dionysian." Their fruits, best for the making of hard ciders to warm pioneer hearts and release some of the tensions of life in the wild.
There were once more varieties of apples than could be named. Now, in line with the demand for getting what we know, exactly what we want, the diversity of the species has dwindled. There is a place in New York that is a living museum seeking to cultivate the biological story of the apple from its beginnings in Khazakstan to its time in the spotlight of the America's.
The moral of the sweetness story is one so pervading in our culture today. By the mere availability to sweetness, the specialty, the delicacy, the paramount importance placed on this simple fruit has been "cheapened" by its sheer accessibility. That is the story of our times.
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The Tulip, The story of imperfect beauty
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Tulips are everywhere, heralding the spring, the break from the cold winter. They overshadow even the daffodils and the crocuses who make their appearance sooner. Why? What is the draw of these flowers?
Flowers are beauty incarnate. Unless one is clinically depressed, flowers will always incite tenderness in the hearts of humans. Humans have used flowers as a sign of food in our days as hunter/gatherers. They were a means of keeping time, to know when seasons would change, etc.
Looking at life through the lens of this book, through the eye of the tulip, is fascinating. Michael Pollan allows the reader to become the flower for a moment, understanding that flowers lure servants to spread their seeds and meet their immobile needs through fragrance, sensuality, and the captivating trance of beauty.
Tulips originally came from the East. They were fresh to the eyes of Europeans. They are colorful and said to be stolen, giving them the allure of taboo. Every so often a tulip would appear so radical in color, in total, riotous rebellion to the surrounding flowers that they intoxicated a whole country, Holland.
Tulips, like apples, grown from seed don't "come true." The bulbs of the flowers, like the grafting of a tree, will produce the same kind of flowers. Farmers quit farming, everyone dropped everything to deal in the business of beauty, in the business of tulip bulbs.
The beauty would be its own undoing, unfortunately. The rebellious flowers were "broken." It was a virus that incited their colorful stray from the Apollonian order of yellows, reds, pinks. Their beauty, as it is with beauty sometimes, was the bane of their very existence. The cultivators of these unassuming flowers were, in fact, leading them down the garden path to disease and death. The irony. The tulip has fallen victim to the same destructive energy as the apple, commonality. It seems humans do not value the everyday in the same way they value the unique, the once in a lifetime vision of beauty or experience, which brings us to the next desire...intoxication.
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| Cannabis, the forbidden fruit |
The forbidden fruit of our day. A plant that has been the subject of an all out 'war.' The road to intoxication lies within the buds of this plant, although, it is not the only plant to produce intoxicating effects. Many of our modern day medicines are derivatives of such plants, poppies, for example, produce opiates used in morphine to quell intense pain, as well as heroine that incites ecstasy in its users. The coca plant is used as stimulant to natives in South America for energy, but can also be made into cocaine. Marijuana itself is proven to have medicinal effects for ailments such as glaucoma, premenstrual symptoms, insomnia. Hemp oil was just legalized in cancer treatments here in Utah. But why...why the psychotropic plants in the first place within the plant kingdom? Why is there such a desire for the altering of one's consciousness?
Intoxication is nothing new. Psychotropic plants have been used for millennia, since their discoveries. The wont for the blurring of the edges of this mortal reality is all pervading. Pollan even goes so far as to cite the spinning of children for the feeling of dizziness as a gateway to the search for fraying those edges just a little. The effects of the plants create their taboo. Their taboo created their niche in the underground world of cultivation.
Modern day alchemists of light, water, manipulation of time and the cloning of females has become art in the world of marijuana cultivation. Although these untrained botanists must remain hidden from view here in America, we visit Holland again to see that the cultivation of this plant has become, in fact, a search for perfection that is coevolving with the growers as well as the plants themselves.
These plants have an amazing openness to the indoor growing conditions that have been forced on the cultivators due to the war on drugs here in America. What the enforcers of the laws did not expect was that the plant would not only participate in the synthesis of its domestication, but thrive under these new conditions, increasing the potency of its THC, the psychoactive ingredient most under scrutiny. Taboo and the forbiddance of the subject has become the object of incredible desire. Irony.
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| The Potato, an unassuming image of control |
The potato. Seems innocent enough. Pomme de terre they call it in French, apple of the Earth. Unassuming. Nutritious. The subject of intense control issues and unnatural intentions is what this apple of the Earth has become. The potato rounds out Pollan's delve into the mysteries of how humanity relates with the fruits of the Earth in this book. I had thought it would be the most uninteresting chapter of the entire work, was I ever wrong.
The potato represents an almost complete source of nutrition, save that of Vitamin A. It is easy to grow, thrives on neglect like most house plants I keep alive. Grows in the dark; however, it is flippant. It requires the right conditions for such easy care. Here begins the paradox that plagues the potato and those who try to harness it, try to domesticate it. The potato, like the Oak tree, doesn't necessarily want to play ball and has, at times, reminded humanity that in diversity lies the key to bounty.
Here we become familiar with Monsanto, a company who has changed the face of agriculture forever. Although they are not the first, Monsanto has taken to playing God with the production of food. Humans have always selected for their most desired qualities in the foods they grow. Those selections have mostly been within the realm of the species of the vegetable or fruit. Not in the case of the "Newleaf" potato. The agricultural giant has actually learned to splice genes from bacteria into the potato. The FDA, according to this book, doesn't even recognize the "Newleaf" potato as a food, but rather a pesticide as it will kill the Colorado potato beetle all by itself.
The procurement of such an organism is dangerous territory, especially to tread with the potato. The poor people of Ireland became reliant on the potato. The nourishment from the pomme de terre spurred a population spike, gave the people the avenue of independence, to grow their own food and break free from the restraints of binding government laws and impoverishment. That dependency, that nourishment, became those very same people's demise when a fungus wiped out the crops seemingly overnight.
Pollan interviewed three separate potato farmers in Idaho. One was an older farmer trying to wage chemical wars, with the very pesticides Monsanto provides, against the plagues of Russet potatoes and losing. He would not even eat the potatoes he was producing. The next farmer was riding the wave of "Newleaf" potatoes and technological advances in the maintenance of his fields. He ate those potatoes but did warn that he was unaware of the long term effects of their existence. Our last farmer, an organic farmer practicing attunement to the rhythms of nature, employing the methods of variety in the planting of potatoes, knowing the diversity is the only defense against the plagues of potatoes. Not controlling the plants, but working with them harmoniously.
So what does all of this mean? For me, reading this book made me want to throw some apple seeds out to see if they'll "come true," take some time to study this spring's vision of beauty in tulips, experience the psychotropic avenues Mother Nature has afforded us, plant an array of potatoes and buy organic.
Michael Pollan aligns these four species with ideas of Greek mythology, Christian history, the muting of Pagan influence across the board in recent history, paradoxes, adventures, worldwide participation in the cultivation of beauty, sweetness, intoxication and control in one delicious work of written words. Who knew the procurement of farming and agriculture was so rich with adventure, stories of thievery, death, underground dealings and a new world order?
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