WEEK 8-Everything Matters

Botany over Baseball

In his book The Botany of Desire Michael Pollan writes of 17th century Holland, “Botany became a national pastime, followed as closely and avidly as we follow sports today.” It was this avid interest in botany that eventually led to the Dutch tulip craze.

What would it look like if Botany was America’s current pastime? There would be a plants section each day in The New York Times. Occasionally the paper’s actual headline might read “Rare Peony cross found in Connecticut: The neighborhood goes wild.” We might grow up knowing the names of famous gardeners. They would get paid millions to endorse products. I only use planthouse spades would be the voice over as we watched the gardener of the year Michael Gorden in slow motion plant a tulip bulb. Kids would be banned from wearing gardener aprons to school because their appearance would start gang fights.

On some autumn Sunday afternoon we’d gather to watch the Rose Bowl—a cut throat competition where the nation’s elite rose growers pitted their top specimens against each other.

And each day after school thousands of high school kids would gather in their schools’ garden arenas to hone intricate skills like orchid crossing or bonsai that they might use to defeat a neighboring team in the next week’s game.