Diamond, J. 1997. Chapter 7 – How to Make an Almond (pg. 114-130) in Guns, Germs and Steel. W. W. Norton & Company, New York, New York.
The introductory chapter of ‘The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World’ explains Pollan’s logic behind where his ideas came from and what he was trying to accomplish: linking the desires (sweetness; beauty; intoxication; control) and destinies of humans and plants, specifically focusing on the points of view of apples, tulips, cannabis, and potatoes. Pollan pointed out that many things involving plants can be thought of from two different perspectives, from humans and from plants perspectives. An example of this is how Pollan stated that agriculture can be thought of as our own brilliant way of gathering food, as well as “something the grasses did to people as a way to conquer the trees” (p. xxi). Pollan states that when discussing each of the four plants, he considered many things – including their history, science, philosophy, and mythology – with the ultimate goal that our thinking will be altered to consider ourselves having a “reciprocal relationship” (p. xxv) with nature. How Pollan represented both sides and considered them both equally important and true makes me very interested in reading what he will have to say about each of the four plants and the interactions we share with them.
I enjoyed how Pollan spoke very personably during this introduction; using a specific instance in his life (planting fingerling potatoes in his garden) to draw the audience into his thoughts and ideas, as well as using imagery such as “sowing rows in the neighborhood of a flowering apple tree that was fairly vibrating with bees” (p. xii). I have found that I learn information much better, and remember it much easier, when this information is expressed as a descriptive, vibrant story. Thus, Pollan’s writing in his introduction was very appealing to me.
I quite like how Pollen spun the idea of coevolution, with the plants “playing on the animals’ desires, conscious and otherwise” (p. xv). His thought: “So the question arose in my mind that day: Did I choose to plant these potatoes, or did the potato make me do it?” (p. xv) is a humorous way of explaining his point that “in a coevolutionary relationship every subject is … an object, every object a subject” (p. xxi). Though he was slightly repetitive when backing up this point, stating it in these (and other) different ways helped me to understand better exactly what he was trying to say and what his ideas encompass.
I really liked when Pollan said that “Plants are nature’s alchemists, expert at transforming water, soil, and sunlight into an array of precious substances, many of them beyond the ability of human beings to conceive, much less manufacture” (p. xix). Comparing plants to alchemists enforced in me the amazing ability that plants have to make things that other organism need (but can’t make themselves) from materials/reagents that they can’t use.
Chapter 7 of Diamond’s book ‘Guns, Germs and Steel’, entitled ‘How to Make and Almond’, used the almond as an example crop while discussing the cultivation of wild plants. Plant domestication was examined, along with comparisons of the differences between wild and cultivated plants. Diamond then addressed some invisible changes that assisted humans in cultivating some specific crops. One of these was the mutations that occurred in peas, wheat, and barley, which caused them to not disperse their seeds properly in the wild, thus they were cultivated for easier gathering of the seeds by humans (p. 120).
The way Diamond began his chapter on ‘How to Make an Almond’, by first starting with what wild plant hikers sometimes eat then going on to mention that a few dozen wild almonds contain enough cyanide to kill us, immediately got my attention as I was unaware of this fact. In this chapter, Diamond occasionally wrote in a similar was as Pollan did; for example “Naturally, strawberry plants didn’t set out with a conscious intent of attracting birds when, and only when , their seeds were ready to be dispersed. Neither did thrushes set out with the intent of domesticating strawberries” (p. 116); which I quite enjoyed. I also liked how on page 122 Diamond goes into examples of how humans have artificially selected for different parts of plants that have purposes for us, as this enforced some of the examples that we did in our laboratory.
All in all, I enjoyed reading Pollan’s introductory chapter more than Diamond’s chapter on almonds.; however, I’m not entirely sure why this was the case.
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