The Botany Of Desire

The Botany Of Desire describes how, contrary to popular belief, we might not be using plants as much as plants use us, by getting humans to ensure their survival, thanks to appealing to our desires for beauty, sweetness, intoxication and control.

The story we’re always told in school is the one of the birds and the bees, explaining how plants depend on bees to spread their pollen, and offer their nectar in exchange. It’s always a story of the “poor plants,” who can’t survive on their own and always need others to help.

This makes it natural for us to think of plants like objects and humans and animals like subjects. We’re the active ones, we “do” stuff, and if we don’t choose to include plants in our plan, well, they get left out.

But what if the plants are in charge? What if they’re the subjects, getting us to do stuff for them?

If you think about it, the only reason that makes us think of plants as helpless creatures is that they can’t move on their own. Fine, so they can’t go anywhere and replicate, but if that’s the only handicap they have, then all they have to do to overcome it is get others to come to them and do it for them.

And boy, are they doing a great job. By producing things that speak to our basic desires, specifically those for sweetness, beauty, intoxication and control, they might really be the ones controlling us.

Let’s look a sweetness and intoxication in particular.

When you visit the US, apples abound. The east coast has an entire apple industry, with many popular tourist activities being apple picking, learning how to make apple cider, and of course visiting apple farms. It might come as a shock to you then that there’s only one kind of apple native to North America: the crabapple, and it’s barely edible. Being most noteworthy for giving its name to a Simpsons character, you might now ask: “Well, where do all the apples come from then?” As it turns out, one man is largely responsible for America’s “appleness”, and that man’s name is Johnny Appleseed. Really named John Chapman, he got his nickname for contributing to the growth of millions of apple trees across 1,200 all throughout the country from 1800 to 1845. European settlers had tried to introduce the apples they brought with them to America for decades, but they were unsuited for the new climate. Johnny realized that every apple’s seeds contain a different set of genes, so by simply planting a lot of them, eventually some would flourish. He traveled wherever America would expand next to, planting new trees and helping…