February 14, 2002

Plains Folk: The Botany of Desire

Tom Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University

Perhaps Johnny Appleseed was not the G-rated character that Disney Studios would have us believe. Even the simple purchase of an order of french fries might not be so innocent as we presume. When you tangle with plants, things are not as they seem. It may be the plants, not us, who are profiting from the relationship. That's the main idea behind a new book from Random House: The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World, by Michael Pollan.

Here on the Great Plains we live in a landscape sculpted--so we think--by human enterprise. Our mythic history both celebrates and mourns the transformation of the prairie into living space and productive acreage. We know the job is never done, although we keep trying; every new generation of herbicides promises "control," doesn't it? (Not having to make my living from the land, I beg forgiveness from my fellow plains folk for finding herbicide ads hilarious. I can't help it. They're so dumb.)

As for our field crops, though, we figure we have them under control. And that's where we're mistaken, Pollan says. The Botany of Desire is about co-evolution, that is, how plants and people have shaped one another, and in Pollan's book, the initiative belongs to the plants. He gives four examples, four plants, each of which satisfies some human desire, each of which has proliferated with the help of humans who think they are in charge. The first is the apple tree, which spread from its original home in Kazakhstan with the help of humans who desired sweetness and, to be honest, an alcoholic buzz.

Until the 20th century, nearly all apples were raised for cider and apple jack, not for eating. Johnny Appleseed's nurseries were filled with tacky trees raised from seed, but that was fine, because the fruit was all going into a cider press anyway. Wholesome images of Johnny Appleseed, then, celebrate a man whose life work was to keep the American frontier in a state of inebriation.

The second example is the tulip, the Asian flower that became the subject of a speculative bubble in Holland during the 1600s. The focus of the tulipomania that gripped the country was the gaudy tulips called "breaks," those with odd and striking color innovations. Pollan agrees with me and most other romantics that the standardized tulips in beds today are boring. The Dutch, bless their Calvinist hearts, went nutty over the wilder, sexier ones, and many went broke in the process. Once again, while people were destroyed, the plants prospered.

The third example is--bear with me on this--cannabis, or marijuana. Here Pollan gets into an elaborate discussion about whether there is such a thing as a consciousness-raising drug, which a lot of people will find objectionable. Any open-minded farmer or gardener, though, will be fascinated by the story of how, because of the war on drugs, cannabis culture was forced to go indoors. An impressive body of plant-breeding expertise developed among the outlaws of cannabis culture, resulting in a far more potent product on the street than ever scented the air at Woodstock. But with a drug plant, can you ever say that humans are in control?

The final example, the one that touches all of us, is potatoes. Potato growers of the plains are fully aware of the corporate pressures that bear on their operations. Pollan begins with a discussion of Monsanto and its genetically engineered NewLeaf potato.

Now, genetic engineering of crop plants is a technical and controversial subject that I won't pretend to settle here, but Pollan gives us an important insight. Maybe, if we're worried about genetic engineering and other such intrusive manipulations of nature and agriculture, then we should quit hollering about Monsanto and instead just stop ordering and demanding those long, perfect, golden McDonald's fries.

Me, I'm including at least three varieties of potatoes in my seed order this winter. No tulips, no cannabis. I'm buying a cider press. I'm willing to be manipulated by plants I like.

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Source: Tom Isern, (701) 799-2941, tom@plainsfolk.com 
Editor: Tom Jirik, (701) 231-9629, tjirik@ndsuext.nodak.edu 

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