The Botany of Desire- Katie Lamp

Before this class, I had read The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan. When we began to delve into the relationship between humans and nature, I thought of this book because Pollan examines how humans and some plants have domesticated each other over time. Plants domesticating people? Seems like a strange idea at first but Pollan makes a really good argument with his discussions on the relationship between humans and the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato. These four plants have contributed to our shift from a nomadic people to an agricultural society, and looking at how plants have "domesticated" people (rather than the other way around) not only makes us consider that we may not have all the control as we'd like to think, but also shows that the relationship between humans and nature has several different dimensions.