The botany of desire [WorldCat Entities]

""Flowers. Trees. Plants. We've always thought that we controlled them. But what if, in fact, they have been shaping us? Based on Michael Pollan's best-selling book, The Botany of Desire takes viewers on an eye-opening exploration of the human relationship with the plant world - seen from the plants' point of view. Every schoolchild learns about the mutually beneficial dance of honeybees and flowers: to make their honey, the bees collect nectar and in the process spread pollen, which contains the flowers' genes. The Botony of Desire proposes that people and domesticated plants have formed a similarly reciprocal relationship. The program examines this unique relationship through the stories of four familiar species, relating how they evolved to satisfy humankind's most basic yearnings. It links fundamental human desires for sweetness, beauty, intoxication and control with the plants that satisfy them - the apple, the tulip, marijuana and the potato. We learn that we humans are intricately woven into the web of nature, not standing outside it. From the potato fields of Idaho and Peru to the apple orchards of New England; from a medical marijuana hot house to the tulip mecca of Amsterdam, where in 1637, one Dutchman, crazed with 'tulip mania,' paid as much for a single bulb as the going price of a townhouse. How could flowers, with no real practical value to humans, become so desperately desired that they drove many to financial ruin? The Botany of Desire takes a world we thought we knew, and allows us to see it in an entirely new way." -- ABC website."
"Shows how human desires are an essential, intricate part of natural history. The program will explore the natural history of four plants -the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato - and the corresponding human desires - sweetness, beauty, intoxication and control. This two-hour documentary begins in Michael Pollan's garden, and roams the world, from the fields of Iowa to the apple forests of Kazakhstan, from a medical marijuana hot house to the tulip markets of Amsterdam."
"Shows how human desires are an essential, intricate part of natural history. The program will explore the natural history of four plants -the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato - and the corresponding human desires - sweetness, beauty, intoxication and control. This two-hour documentary begins in Michael Pollan's garden, and roams the world, from the fields of Iowa to the apple forests of Kazakhstan, from a medical marijuana hot house to the tulip markets of Amsterdam."@en