Coevolution, Marijuana and the Botany of Desire

Pollancvr

It's coevolution. And he wrote a book looking at the natural world from the perspective of plants.

THE BOTANY OF DESIRE  (great title) focuses on the relationship between humans and four specific plants: apples, tulips, marijuana, and potatoes.

Some interesting bits:

• Human manipulation of apples has weakened it, so that "modern apples require more pesticide than any other food crop."
• Tulipomania in 17th-century Holland - the markings that made the tulip so attractive to the Dutch were actually caused by a virus
• In looking at how biotechnology is changing our relationship to nature, he visited the Monsanto company headquarters and planted some of their NewLeaf brand genetically-modified potato seeds in his garden.
• A global desire for consistently perfect French fries contributes to both damaging monoculture and the genetic engineering necessary to support it.
• And marijuana?
  

MICHAEL POLLAN: Well, in all cases, we're talking about desires. The book is as much about our human desires that nature gratifies as it is about the plant. And I guess my premise is that by looking, you know, in the same way you look at a flower and you can learn something about what a bee thinks is beautiful and that a bee has a sweet tooth, if you look at marijuana, you can learn something about our minds and how our minds work and why we should be, like all cultures, you know, every human culture with one exception has had a psychoactive plant. The one exception is the Eskimos. And the only reason they didn't is because nothing grew where they were. And as soon as they discovered alcohol, that became their psychoactive plant.