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Michael Pollan – The Botany of Desire (Documentary)http://www.pbs.org/thebotanyofdesire/about.phpThe Botany of Desire, a two-hour PBS documentary based on the best-selling book by Michael Pollan, takes us on an eye-opening exploration of our relationship with the plant world – seen from the plants’ point of view.Every schoolchild learns about the mutually beneficial dance of honeybees and flowers: to make their honey, the bees collect nectar, and in the process spread pollen, which contains the flowers’ genes. The Botany of Desire proposes that people and domesticated plants have formed a similarly reciprocal relationship. “We don’t give nearly enough credit to plants,” says Pollan. “They’ve been working on us – they’ve been using us – for their own purposes.”The Botany of Desire examines this unique relationship through the stories of four familiar species, telling how each of them evolved to satisfy one of our most basic yearnings. Linking our fundamental desires for sweetness, beauty, intoxication and control with the plants that gratify them – the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato – The Botany of Desire shows that we humans are intricately woven into the web of nature, not standing outside it.Shot in stunning high definition photography, the program begins with Michael Pollan in a California garden and sets off to roam the world: from the potato fields of Idaho and Peru to the apple orchards of New England; from a medical marijuana hot house to the tulip mecca of Amsterdam, where in 1637, one Dutchman, crazed with “tulipmania,” paid as much for a single tulip bulb as the going price for a town house. How could flowers, with no real practical value to humans, become so desperately desired that they drove many to financial ruin?The Botany of Desire argues that the answer lies in the powerful but often overlooked relationship between people and plants. With Pollan as our on-screen guide to this frankly sensuous natural world, The Botany of Desire explores the dance of domestication between humans and plants. Through the history of these four familiar plants, the film seeks to answer the question: Who has really been domesticating whom?They are four of the most ordinary plants. We’ve always had this idea that we are in charge, but what if, in fact, they have been modeling us? We don’t give enough recognition to plants. They have been laboring on us, and they’ve been utilizing us for their own goals. There are four plants that have walked the road to accomplishment by fulfilling human ambitions. The tulip, by satisfying our longing for a certain kind of attractiveness, has gotten us to take it from its basis in Central Asia and distribute it around the world.Marijuana, by satisfying our ambition to change awareness, has gotten us to risk our lives and freedom, in order to produce more of it. The potato, by fulfilling our desire for mastery, the control over surrounding, so that we can nourish ourselves has gotten itself out of South America and extended its range far beyond where it was long time ago. And the apple, by satisfying our appetite for sweetness, begins in the woods of Kazakhstan and is now the worldwide fruit. These are great champions in the game of domestication.The bee believes it’s getting the best of the deal with the blooming apple. It’s getting in, it’s taking the nectar and has no sense that it’s picked up the pollen and is transferring it to another location. For the bee to assume that it’s in charge of this friendship is really just a lack of success of bee’s insight. We have the same failure of imagination. We are too working for the potatoes in some sense. We are planting them, we are giving them a habitat, and in the same time we think we’re calling the shots.Wouldn’t it be appealing to look at our connection to domesticated plants from the plants’ perspective? Of course, plants don’t have awareness or goals, but by using our consciousness we can put ourselves in their roots to see things from their angle. When we do that, nature unexpectedly looks very different. We become aware that we’re in the nature’s web, not outside of it. These plants are reflectors in which we can see ourselves in a different way.Amazon ReviewRead this book and you may never eat a conventionally grown potato again. I know I won’t. If I hadn’t been a dedicated organic gardener for over 40 years, I would become one after reading THE BOTANY OF DESIRE. I find it incredibly puzzling that more people haven’t bitten the organic bullet. I truly believe a diet of conventionally grown food can shorten your life and bring on all sorts of aches, pains, and illnesses you might not otherwise suffer. Organic gardening works and the stuff you grow is better for you. If you can’t grow it, for goodness sakes, hustle on down to your closest Whole Foods store and buy it. Organic food may be more expensive than conventional foods, but in the long run you will save on medical bills.Michael Pollen’s book is simply the best set of gardening essays I’ve read in a long while, maybe ever. And that’s saying a lot because I am a big fan of gardening books (I’ve reviewed over 100 of them for Amazon). I haven’t read something so enjoyable since Henry Mitchell’s columns and books. It’s not often a book of garden essays can make you laugh (misadventures with Mary Jane), make you cry (one million Irish dead of starvation), make you angry (one million Irish dead), and make you smile (is there any tulip so lovely as `The Queen of the Night?’Pollan covers four plants, Apples, Tulips, Marijuana, and Potatoes. His first chapter on apples, disabused me of all my notions about Johnny Appleseed. I had read Anna Pavord’s book THE TULIP, so the tulip section of Pollan’s book was the least interesting for me, although he added some interesting anecdotal information.The best section of this book as far as I am concerned is the chapter on Marijuana. My husband is a substance abuse counselor and I recommended the chapter to him. It could have been titled, “Everything you ever wanted to know about Marijuana that they didn’t tell you in medical school or criminology class.” If you haven’t yet decided the U.S. government officials who devised the war on drugs are nuts, read this chapter and you will become convinced. Drug war indeed!!! Didn’t we learn anything with Al Capone??The section on the potato plant is downright scary. Pollan’s adventures with Monsanto are illuminating. Once again, the feds come out as the dumb bunnies. Or, maybe it’s the elected officials and their appointees who won’t let the EPA and USDA do it’s job. The material on evolution in this section nicely complements Steve Jones’ DARWIN’S GHOST. Monsanto is in the process of obtaining patents on natural substances and evolutionary processes that will affect the whole food chain-and the CEO says “trust me”. Yeah, right.Do yourself a favor, during the cold weather ahead. Curl up in an easy chair with a cup of tea and read this book. Whether you garden or not, you will love it.