The botany of desire: a plant's-eye view of the world (29 page)

Herbert, Zbigniew. “The Bitter Smell of Tulips,” in
Still Life with a Bridge: Essays and Apocryphas
(London: Jonathan Cape, 1993).

Schama, Simon:
The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age
(New York: Vintage Books, 1997).

CHAPTER 3: MARIJUANA

This chapter benefited enormously from interviews, correspondence, and time spent with a handful of people knowledgeable about the science, culture, and politics of cannabis: Allen St. Pierre at NORML; Peter Gorman and Kyle Kushman at
High Times
magazine; David Lenson at the University of Massachusetts; Bryan R., a breeder and grower living in Amsterdam; Valerie and Mike Corral, who grow and give away medical marijuana in Santa Cruz, California; Lester Grinspoon at the Harvard Medical School; John P. Morgan, a pharmacologist at the City University of New York Medical School; Graham Boyd at the ACLU Drug Policy Litigation Project; Rick Musty and his colleagues at the International Cannabis Research Society; Ethan Nadelman and his colleagues at the Lindesmith Center; Allyn Howlett at the Saint Louis University School of Medicine; and Raphael Mechoulam at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

These books and articles proved especially enlightening:

Baum, Dan.
Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1996).

Clarke, Robert Connell.
Hashish!
(Los Angeles: Red Eye Press, 1998).

———.
Marijuana Botany
(Berkeley, Calif.: Ronin Publishing, 1981).

De Quincey, Thomas.
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
(New York: Dover, 1995; first published 1822).

Escohotado, Antonio.
A Brief History of Drugs,
trans. by Kenneth A. Symington (Rochester, Vt.: Park Street Press, 1999).

Fisher, Philip.
Wonder, the Rainbow and the Aesthetics of Rare Experience
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998).

Ginsberg, Allen. “The Great Marijuana Hoax: First Manifesto to End the Bringdown,” in
The Atlantic Monthly,
November 1966, pp. 104, 107–12.

Grinspoon, Lester, M.D.
Marihuana Reconsidered
(Oakland, Calif.: Quick American Archives, 1999; first published 1971). Carl Sagan’s anonymous marijuana “trip report,” attributed to Mr. X, appears here beginning on p. 109. You can also read it—and Allen Ginsberg’s article cited above—at Grinspoon’s website: www.marijuana-uses.com.
*

Huxley, Aldous.
The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell
(New York: Perennial Library, 1990; first published 1953).

Institute of Medicine.
Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base
(Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1999). Clear, accessible explanation of how cannabinoids work in the brain.

Lenson, David.
On Drugs
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995). Little known, but one of the most thoughtful and original books ever written on the drug experience. The quote about the romantic imagination is from “The High Imagination,” Lenson’s Hess lecture at the University of Virginia, April 29, 1999.

McKenna, Terence.
Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge
(New York: Bantam Books, 1992).

Merlin, Mark David.
Man and Marijuana: Some Aspects of Their Ancient Relationship
(Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1972).

Musty, Richard E., et al., ed. “International Symposium on Cannabis and the Cannabinoids,”
Life Sciences,
vol. 56, nos. 23–24, 1995. See also the ICRS website: www.cannabinoidsociety.org.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life,” in
Untimely Meditation,
ed. by Daniel Breazeale (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

Pinker, Steven.
How the Mind Works,
op. cit.

Plant, Sadie.
Writing on Drugs
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000).

Schivelbusch, Wolfgang.
Tastes of Paradise: A Social History of Spices, Stimulants, and Intoxicants,
trans. by David Jacobson (New York: Vintage Books, 1992).

Schultes, Richard E. “Man and Marijuana,”
Natural History,
vol. 82, no. 7, 1973, pp. 58–63, 80–82.

Siegel, Ronald K.
Intoxication: Life in Pursuit of Artificial Paradise
(New York: Dutton, 1989).

Szasz, Thomas.
Ceremonial Chemistry: The Ritual Persecution of Drugs, Addicts, and Pushers
(London: Routledge, 1975).

Wasson, E. Gordon, et al.
Persephone’s Quest: Entheogens and the Origins of Religion
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986). A reasonable and serious work on what is still a highly speculative field of inquiry.

Weil, Andrew.
The Natural Mind: An Investigation of Drugs and the Higher Consciousness
(New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1986; first published 1972). A quarter century after it first appeared, this remains one of the sanest books on drugs.

Zimmer, Lynn, and John P. Morgan.
Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts: A Review of the Scientific Evidence
(New York: The Lindesmith Center, 1997).

CHAPTER 4: THE POTATO

This chapter had its origins in an article on Monsanto and genetically modified food I wrote for
The New York Times Magazine
(“Playing God in the Garden,” October 25, 1998, pp. 44–50, 51, 62–63, 82, 92–93). While I was researching that article, Monsanto was remarkably open and generous, giving me access to its scientists, executives, laboratories, customers—and seed potatoes. My education in the science and politics of genetic engineering also owes a great deal to Margaret Mellon at the Union of Concerned Scientists; Andrew Kimbrell at the Center for Technology Assessment; Rebecca Goldberg at the Environmental Defense Fund; Betsy Lydon at Mothers & Others; Hope Shand and her colleagues at RAFI; and Steve Talbott’s excellent website on technology and society, www.netfuture.org. I also received an invaluable education from the farmers who took the time to talk to me and show me around: Mike Heath, Nathan Jones, Woody Deryckx, Danny Forsyth, Steve Young, and Fred Kirschenmann.

On the botany and social history of the potato, as well as on agriculture generally, I found these books especially helpful:

Anderson, Edgar.
Plants, Man and Life,
op. cit.

Berry, Wendell.
The Gift of Good Land
(San Francisco: North Point Press, 1981). Still the wisest voice on the connections between agriculture and everything else.

———.
Life Is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition
(Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 2000).

———.
The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture
(San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1977).

Diamond, Jared.
Guns, Germs, and Steel,
op. cit.

Fowler, Cary, and Pat Mooney.
Shattering: Food, Politics, and the Loss of Genetic Diversity
(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996).

Gallagher, Catherine, and Stephen Greenblatt.
Practicing New Historicism
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). See especially Chapter 4, “The Potato in the Materialist Imagination,” written by Gallagher.

Harland, Jack R.
Crops and Man
(Madison, Wis.: American Society of Agronomy, 1992).

Hobhouse, Henry.
Seeds of Changes: Five Plants That Changed Mankind
(London: Harper & Row, 1986).

Holden, John, et al.
Genes, Crops, and the Environment
(Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

Howard, Sir Albert.
An Agricultural Testament
(London: Oxford University Press, 1940).

Lewontin, Richard.
Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA
(New York: Harper Perennial, 1991). A skeptical voice on genetic determinism, the orthodoxy of our time.

———.
The Triple Helix: Gene, Organism, and Environment
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000).

Salaman, Redcliffe.
The History and Social Influence of the Potato
(Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1985; first published 1949). Everything you wanted to know, and then some.

Scott, James C.
Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998). This fascinating multidisciplinary study of government, architecture, and agriculture is indispensable on the subject of monoculture, which Scott puts into the context of modernism.

Shiva, Vandana.
Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge
(Boston: South End Press, 1997).

———.
Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply
(Boston: South End Press, 2000).

Tilman, David. “The Greening of the Green Revolution,”
Nature,
November 19, 1998, pp. 211–12.

Van der Ploeg, Jan Douwe. “Potatoes and Knowledge,” in
An Anthropological Critique of Development,
ed. by Mark Hobart (London: Routledge, 1993).

Viola, Herman J., and Carolyn Margolis, eds
. Seeds of Change: Five Hundred Years Since Columbus
(Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Instutition Press, 1991). See especially the contributions by Alfred Crosby, William F. McNeill, and Sidney W. Mintz.

Weatherford, Jack.
Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World
(New York: Crown Publishers, 1988).

Wilson, E. O.
The Diversity of Life,
op. cit.

Zuckerman, Larry.
The Potato: How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World
(Boston: Faber & Faber, 1998).

INDEX

Afghanistan, cannabis in

Africa:

cannabis use in

floriculture in

agriculture:

aesthetics of

as effort to control nature

industrial

organic

origins of

see also
apples; biotechnology; cannabis; gardens; genetic engineering; monoculture; plants; potatoes; wheat

agrobacteria

Ahmed III, Sultan

Albemarle Pippin

alchemy:

and medieval gardens

plant chemistry as

and tulip breaks

alcohol

see also
intoxication; temperance movement; wine

Allegheny County (Pennsylvania)

Alma-Ata (Kazakhstan)

Amanita muscaria

Amsterdam (Netherlands):

cannabis culture in

tulip craze in

anandamide

see also
cannabinoids; cannabis

Andes, and potato biodiversity

see also
Incas; Peru

“Anecdote of the Jar” (Stevens)

angiosperms

animals

coevolution with plants

domestication of

and plant toxins

see also
insects

Anslinger, Harry J.

ants

aphids

Apollo, attributes of

apples:

American evolution of

cider-making from

coevolution of

domestication of

and grafted trees

heterozygosity of

and human desire for sweetness

hybridization of

modern commercial breeding of

public relations campaign for

religious image of

seeds of

varieties of

Appleseed, Johnny:
see
Chapman, John

Arnold, Matthew

art, as balance of order and abandon

see also
Apollo; Dionysus

Artificial Paradises
(Baudelaire)

artificial selection

see also
coevolution; domestication

Asclepias syriaca

Assassins, story of

Bacillus thuringiensis
(Bt):

in genetic engineering

insect resistance to

as pesticide

Bailey, Liberty Hyde

Baldwin apple

Baudelaire, Charles

beauty:

and apple marketing

correlation with health of

as evolutionary strategy

human desire for

principles of

see also
tulips

Beecher, Henry Ward

bees:

American colonial importation of

coevolution of

color and shape perceptions of

and pollination

beetles

see also
Colorado potato beetle

Berry, Wendell

Bill of Rights, erosion of

biodiversity:

of apples

as evolutionary safeguard

of potatoes

as protection against disease

of tulips

biological pollution

biotechnology

see also
genetic engineering; Monsanto corporation

“Bitter Smell of Tulips, The” (Herbert)

Black Tulip, The
(Dumas)

Bloom, Harold

Boethius

Boone, Daniel

bread, symbolic meaning of

Brillat-Savarin, Anthelme

Brilliant (Ohio)

Broom, Persis

Bt: see
Bacillus thuringiensis
(Bt)

bubbles, speculative

bulbs, introduction to Europe of

see also
tulipomania; tulips

bumblebees:
see
bees

Busbecq, Ogier Ghislain de

California, cannabis culture in

Campus Martius Museum (Marietta, Ohio)

cannabinoids

brain network for

effects on short-term memory of

cannabis:

in Amsterdam

author’s experience with

coevolution with people of

commercial value of

criminalization of

cultivation techniques for

cultural roles of

flowers of

as forbidden plant

and human desire for intoxication

increased potency of

indica
x
sativa
hybridization

psychoactive effects of

seeds of

uses of

see also
hashish; hemp; sinsemilla, THC

capitalism, and opposition to drug use

Carter, Jimmy

Catherine the Great, empress of Russia

catnip

Chapman, John (Johnny Appleseed):

as agent of apple biodiversity

on apple tree grafting

character of

as Dionysian figure

as frontier nurseryman

Heritage Center proposed for

impact on wilderness of

medicinal plants brought by

mythologization of

pictorial images of

religious beliefs of

Charge Against the Pagan and Turkish Tulip-Bulbs

chemicals, agricultural

see also
fertilizers; fungicides; herbicides; pesticides

China:

cannabis in

invention of grafting in

peony breeding in

roses

chocolate, psychoactive effects of

Christianity

and opposition to drug use

and spirituality from plants

symbolism of bread in

and wine

cinchona tree

Clarke, Robert Connell

Claviceps purpurea

Clusius, Carolus

Cobbett, William

cocaine

coevolution

see also
apples; cannabis; domestication; potatoes; tulips

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

Colorado potato beetle

consciousness, altered states of:

and cultural history

human desire for

and plant toxins

as removal of mental filters

and spirituality

ways to achieve

see also
intoxication; transcendence

Constantinople (Turkey), tulips in

contrast, as beauty principle

control, human desire for

see also
genetic engineering; monoculture; potatoes

Cox’s Orange Pippin

Cuisse de Nymphe Emue rose

Culture of Flowers, The
(Goody)

Darwin, Charles:

on angiosperms

evolutionary theories of

datura

Dawkins, Richard

daylilies

DDT

De Quincey, Thomas

Debrecht, Glenda

Defiance (Ohio)

Delicious apples:
see
Golden Delicious; Red Delicious

Demeter

desires, human:
see
beauty; control; intoxication; sweetness

Devane, William

Dionysus, attributes of

Disraeli, Benjamin

Djangaliev, Aimak

dogs, coevolution with humans of

domestication:

of the American frontier

of apples

of cannabis

as cooperative process

Greek god of

of plants

of potatoes

see also
apples; artificial selection; cannabis; coevolution; genetic engineering; hybridization; potatoes; tulips