The botany of desire chapter 1

Study Guide questions for Pollan’s Th e B o tan y o f De s ire : A Plan t’s -Ey e Vie w o f th e Wo rld

1. In his Introduction, Pollan argues that the things that we cultivate and create become our co-creators, so that we are co-evolving with the things we desire. This makes desire a part of our human natural history as well as a

part of natural history. How does Pollan support these ideas? Does the analogy that bees are to flowers as people are to potatoes make sense? How do dogs and Darwin fit into his main ideas? How is his thinking

different from an anthropocentric point of view? {Please look up: anthropocentric and Darwin’s The Origin of

Species if these are not familiar to you!}

2. Considering Chapter 1, according to Pollan, how does the story of “Johnny Appleseed,” a.k.a. John

Chapman, fit into this picture of plants using humans to achieve their ends? Why does Pollan care so much about Chapman the man and the myth of “Johnny Appleseed,”? What do we really know about Chapman?

What is odd, strange and/or heroic and good about him? What is the importance of Chapman growing apple trees from seed? How did apple trees evolve in America? (see especially 8-13). {It is just interesting to notice

that John Chapman and Mary Wollstonecraft were contemporaries. A student group could make a funny

creative project out of a hypothetical meeting between them.}

3. What is the role of sugar or sweetness in evolution? What is the meaning and value of “sweetness” for

people? (17-19) Why is the apple connected to the Garden of Eden story (20)? When did apples get their “wholesome” reputation (22)? How common (or prevalent) was hard cider on the frontier? (22-23)

4. Who is Bill Jones and what did he want to make out of Chapman? What heroic or great things did Chapman

do? What does Pollan think of the real Chapman, who could cross all kinds of boundaries freely? (32-33) Why does the barefoot Chapman have meaning for Pollan (28-29)? What do you think about Chapman’s love life?

What about his religious life? What is good or not so good about his religious understanding?

5. Do you believe Pollan’s idea that Swedenborg’s philosophy partly explains Chapman (33-35)? What do you

think of Pollan’s insight into Chapman and portrayal of Chapman as a “Protestant satyr” (35)? How does

Chapman fit the idea of the ancient Greek god of wine, Dionysus? What is an “American Dionysus” (37-40)? Was he a mystical ecstatic otherworldly character? A crazy person?

6. Pollan draws some important conclusions about Chapman and the apple in the history of America’s frontier. What is the final legacy of Chapman? (41-43) Why is there a “Plant Genetic Resources Unit” (43) that has

2,500 varieties of apple trees? Why is this a good idea? (See especially p. 52) How could a good wild apple make anyone rich? What are some apple success stories?

Chapter 2, “Desire: Beauty / Plant: The Tulip”

7. What is a flower beautiful for? What is the use of beauty in nature, i.e. from the point of view of tulips, and

what is it from the point of view of humans? What are the biological functions of flowers? Is there any possible evolutionary advantage for a person who remembers where flowers grow? (See 67-68.) Why do you think

indifference to flowers is a sign of clinical depression? In what way(s) can a flower give or carry meaning?

8. In what ways do flowers mimic (or appear like) other living things? (See 69-70 and following.) Why did one

botanist call bees “flying penises” (72)? How well does that metaphor work, in your opinion? What does “sexual selection” (74) have to do with beauty, and what are the biological uses of beauty? How is “health”

related to beauty?

9. How did the tulip come into Europe, and where did it come from? Can you explain what happened to the Sultan Ahmed III? (See 82.) What happened in Holland during the time of “tulipomania,” and why would

Holland be especially susceptible to this craze? Do you believe that it is possible that flowers use some people the same that they use bees to dominate more of the world? (See 80-1.) What is the difference between artificial

selection and natural selection?

10. What was the symbolic value of tulips in Holland, i.e. how did it fit in with the Christian religion and humanist culture of the 17th century? What made tulips seem especially magical? (See 87-88). Why does Pollan

say tulips are “classical rather than romantic” (97)? Why would tulips me more like a masculine rather than a feminine flower? Why is the tulip more like Apollo and less like Dionysus?

11. Why were 17th c. Dutch tulip traders often drinking heavily, and what is the “greater fool theory” (103)?

How did the financial speculation actually work? How and why did it crash to an end? Can you think of any contemporary parallels to tulipomania? If you can’t think of any, you can research the subprime mortgage crisis and explain it. This is just one article that explains it: http://www.federalreservehistory.org/Events/DetailView/55

12. Why does Pollan bring up the idea of the world before flowers near the end of his tulip chapter? (See 107). How different would our world be without flowers? Do you agree that, in a way, “the flowers begot us” and all

other mammals? (See 108-109). In what ways do flowers have greater meaning to you now than they did before you read Pollan? Do you agree with him they could contain the meaning of life?

http://www.federalreservehistory.org/Events/DetailView/55
Pollan study guide questions for Ch. 3, p. 111-79.

13. What does Pollan say about the reasons why some plants with magical or consciousness-altering powers are

forbidden? What does the Garden of Eden have to do with this story? Why would the writer(s) of that story include a tree with a forbidden fruit in the first place if the idea is to make a break with the pagan world?

14. What are some possible good reasons why plants would have the powers to alter the consciousness of animals, insects and humans? Why would living things like these plants so much that they damage themselves

to get them? How are sex and drugs related to witches, and what does Paracelsus have to do with this? (See 119, 174-5).

15. According to Pollan, why would both Christianity and capitalism want to ban plants like marijuana? How

did the Reagan-era drug war laws actually create better, stronger, more resilient American marijuana hybrids? How were they different? Why are only the female plants valued by growers? Why was marijuana so powerfully

stigmatized?

16. According to Pollan, why do people seek the pleasure of the marijuana high? How does the “high” actually

work in our brain chemistry and who discovered this? (See especially 153-55). What general types of “highs”

have been cultivated in American marijuana hybrids? (See 150 etc.) Why can’t people kill themselves with a toxic overdose of marijuana?

17. Do you agree with Pollan that many world religions can be understood as part of natural history of discovering powerful plants? Why is opium important to the history of imagination and British Romantic

poetry? (See 145-6 etc.) Is the story of magical plants really the story of our own innate wonder, i.e. something

that was already always there?

{NOTE: on pp. 164-65, Pollan briefly discusses meditation as an outsider, i.e. I can tell that he has read about

it, but he seems to be totally unaware of what meditation really is. So if you are interested in his ideas about meditation, you may want to ask me first.}

18. Do you believe that forgetting is a positive conscious activity that enables our focused awareness to do

necessary things? If this is true, do some plants remove our “filters” or enable more naked reality into our consciousness? What does being in the now have to with “forgetting”? And why would that be a good thing for

creativity and originality?

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