In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan introduces readers to the history and biology of selected plants - the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato. I liked the idea, and was hoping for something like The Beekeeper's Lament, but alas The Botany of Desire is just a tad on the boring side. More than a tad, actually, although I'm going to offer two compounding factors: 1) The tulip. More to the point, between Waves of Prosperity and Tulipomania I've more than had my fill of the flower. 2) It felt like a repeat of Bread, Wine, and Chocolate, just with different - and for me, less interesting - plants. And, yes, this may be slightly unfair since Pollan's book was written over a decade earlier, but I happened to read Bread, Wine, and Chocolate first.
This isn't a bad book. (At least not what I read of it, which was more than half; I called it quits somewhere in the middle of the marijuana chapter.) It's just a book that requires a very specific audience, preferably one that is really, really in to botany and has a serious green thumb. I found the background on Johnny Appleseed interesting, and imagine I would have had similar thoughts on the history of the tulip, if I weren't already so tulip-ed out. Ultimately, though, I'm not enough of a plant person to sustain an interest in them for a couple hundred pages.
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