Botany of Desire questions

1. What is co-evolution?
When things will help other things progress. We help the potato flourish and
become more versatile while they help us grow and survive.
2. What is artificial selection?
Humans will select the best product to reproduce and come forth.
3. How is the human’s role in the garden like or unlike the bee’s?
Bees make it possible for many types of plants to grow and fruit. Like bees,
humans also help plants grow and flourish in many different places that they may not
have gotten without help.

The Apple

4. What does it mean that apples don’t “come true” from seeds?
Apples don’t come true from seeds means that you can plant a seed but should
not expect that exact same apple. Each seed in an apple could produce a different kind
of apple of taste and color.
5. What is grafting,
You take a bud from a tree that produced fruit that you like and insert it into a
young tree. It will produce fruit identical to the first tree.
6. How did early Americans consume apples?
They would take apples and turn them into cider. The apples were commonly
bitter and were not good for just eating.
7. How many apple varieties were commercially available a century ago?
Hundreds to thousands were available. Most varieties were bitter and not
desirable.
8. How many varieties have you tasted in your lifetime?
I have tasted roughly 6-7 different kinds of apples.
9. How has the practice of growing a dwindling handful of cloned varieties in vast
orchards has rendered the apple less fit as a plant.”
Apples carry different traits that help them or harm them. As only select apples
are produced and carried forward, the diversity dwindles. The plants struggle to evolve
and fight off diseases and bugs.
The Tulip

10. What was tulipomania?

It was a time for the dutch that made them spend lots of money on tulips, they
were in a frenzy to buy and show off their flowers. People would buy tulips for crazy
amounts of money. A single broken tulip could go for 10,000 of the money at the time
while someone could live off of 300 of the money at the time.
11. How does Pollan describe flowers?
It was more open and had a different shape and cent than the tulip we know
today.
12. Give some examples of the visual, olfactory, and tactile devices that flowers employ
to get the attention of animals.
Flowers will use their color, size, and fragrance to attract animals, hence humans
carrying forth tulips and almost worshiping them throughout time.
13. Why would flowers, even those that possess both male and female organs, go to
great lengths to avoid pollinating themselves?
It would not be smart because then it will not have the ability to change and
become more attractive. Its goal is to mutate and become domesticated.
14. What is a “broken” tulip?
It was when there were two colors on a single flower. It was very rare to happen.
They were very difficult to get their hands on.
15. What was the real cause?
The real cause was a virus. The bulbs were contaminated.
16. How does Pollan explain the significance of the black tulip?
??

Marijuana

17. What is THC? How does it work?

THC is the chemical that gives a high. It activates receptors in the brain that are
not always active. The brain makes a chemical similar to THC. This chemical helps us
forget short-term and long-term things.
18. What reasons do botanists offer for why cannabis produces the sticky substance
that contains THC?
 The sticky substance is produced by female plants. They are trying to collect the
pollen from male plants but they keep the male and female plants separate so the
female plants will produce more.
19. What is the difference between hemp and cannabis?
Hemp and cannabis are in the same family but hemp has less THC than
cannabis.
20. How does our legal system distinguish between them?
Hemp and cannabis have to contain 0.3% or less of THC to be legal. If the plants
contain more than 0.3% it is federally illegal.
21. Why is forgetting “one of the most important things healthy brains do”?
It leaves our brain open to creativity and new ideas. As we see many things,
there is a chemical in our brain that helps us forget.
22. How long has cannabis been co-evolving with humans?
For thousands of years. It has been found in Egypt and India.
23. How did cannabis come to the United States?
It came with immigrants as they came to the United States. It gained popularity
from Mexicans.
24. What action in Mexico sparked the US cannabis production boom?
Mexico growers started to spray their cannabis with herbicides, which eventually
led to US cannabis fields. Many people did not want contaminated cannabis.

Potato

25. What is genetic modification?

It is when you take genes from one species of any kind to another species of any
kind.
26. What does “unsustainable” mean
Unsustainable means something that may work in the short term but in the long
term will ultimately fail.
27. What role did the potato play in European history?
The potato was able to grow almost anywhere. It supported the populations in
the northern areas of Europe.
28. Do you ever eat genetically modified foods? How do you know?
 I eat GMO foods weekly if not daily. I have heard that most foods have been
genetically modified.