Michael Pollan
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Prof at Berkley
Environmental journalist
Writes for NY Times
The following are his award
winning ideas so don’t blame
me
• Evolutionary
consequences of
human plant
relationships
• & What they say
about us
• Coevolution of bees
and flowers
• It’s a trade
– Food for bee
– Transportation for
apple genes
• Does bee use apple?
Does apple use bee?
Pictured: Species of fly and orchid it
feeds on
"Thus I can understand," Darwin
wrote, "how a flower and a bee
might slowly become, either
simultaneously or one after the
other, modified and adapted in the
most perfect manner to each other,
by continued preservation of
individuals presenting mutual and
slightly favoruable deviations of
structure."
Human partnership with plants
• We’ve selected for size
& taste of potatoes
• The potatoe doesn’t
care as long as it’s
genes get everywhere.
– Making copies, that’s
what’s important
• Plants have found out
our desires and use
them to spread genes
“if only you knew the power of the
deep fried”
• Evolution plays on
millions of little things,
unconscious things,
secret, terrible, weird,
strange, sick, twisted,
eerie, godless, evil
things, but for our
benefit.
• Shape, smell,
bumpiness all
influences which
seeds a farmer buy
Which tomato will survive?
• Does it work?
• Humanities’
domesticated
organisms have the
easiest gig in all of
evolution. 
– Another organism
makes nearly all
choices for them.
– We work hard to breed
them and spread them
around the planet.
– We’ll take them to
other planets one day
• It says something that the
wolf is more impressive to
humans than a dog.
• 50 mil. Dogs, 10K wolves.
• Dogs are better in an
evolutionary sense.
• Dogs DNA tell us things
about us.
– Which is everyone’s
favorite topic
– Apples, tulips, potatoes tell
us what is culturally
important
• take the food’s P.O.V.
• We remake them, and they
remake us
• Human desires are part of our natural
history.
– What is our version of nectar, or a bright red
comb?
• Darwin started his book
with a chapter on Artificial
Selection
– People understood
breeding cocker spaniels or
roses
• Human desire drives this
– It made Natural selection
easier to get your head
around
• Blind chance drives this
• Chance in nature is a BIG
IDEA
• What does it say about
man’s place in the
cosmos?
• But Darwin didn’t
anticipate how
good we’d get at
shaping the envi.
• Satellite image of circular
crop fields characteristic
of center pivot irrigation in
Kansas
• Below Earth at night
• Coruscant/Trantor meme
• Anywhere you consider
“wild” is only so because
we have decided not to
mess with it… for now.
• Panda’s & Cheetah’s
don’t have a chance
unless we say so.
• Will global warming,
ozone holes, space travel
count as artificial
selection?
Not if there’s oil underneath.
Am I right?
• We define “nature” as
something that exists apart
from humanity
– It’s independent
– But where is that? We’ve
dumped into the bottom of the
seas.
• Consider that that Nature is not
something “out there”
• you don’t have to drive to get
to nature. You are in it all the
time.
• Find the beauty of the natural
world in your kitchen.
• Did I just blow your mind
Tripping Billies Zen Style?
Pictured: Morning glory pool hot
spring
2 mil tourists traipse around
Yellowstone every year.
More than 2K buildings are in
the park
3.7K employees
That’s as natural as Kmart
A is for apple
• Malus domestica a
member of the rose
family (flowering
plants –angiosperms)
– 55 mil tons grown in
2005,
– 10 bil worth
– 7.5K cultivars
– China made the most
– Originally from
Kazakhstan
• Search for American
• Great success
J to the A to the Seed
• John Chapman (1774 – 1845
same year as potato famine) A.K.A.
Johnny Appleseed.
• Would gather apples
from Coastal areas and
set down river from
Pittsburgh
• Intro’d apple to OH, IN,
IL
• A bushel could have
300K seeds in it
• J. A-Seed got seeds for
free from cider mills.
• Would head west ahead
of settlers
• By the time they got
there trees had grown
and he had apples to sell
them. Good biz.
• he left nurseries in the
care of someone nearby
who would barter.
• He lived simply, pretty
much homeless, but lots
of people put him up for
the night.
•One time a priest
was keeping mass
long going on about
extravagance.
Where is the
primitive Christian?
"Here's your
primitive Christian!"
• Yeah he wore a pot on his
head, slept on ice floating down
the river, bought lame horses
and nursed them to health,
(child-bride?), weird, but…
• Pioneer guys like J-A-Seed
domesticated the frontier,
crossed white/red racial
borders, seeding it w/ old world
plants
• Also at his death he owned
1,200 acres of prime real
estate.
• He was a legend in his own
time. Like Danny Chew
• The apple got a leg up.
• We’ve got a good relationship.
• Not every plant can
be domesticated for
food.
• We can’t find
palatable whole
acorns
– But the Squirrel and
Oak get along great
• Not every animal can
be domesticated, ask
Siegfreid and Roy
• Allow me to defend
the Oak for a bit
Oaks
• Couple hundred species
– Deciduous and evergreen
– Make acorns
• Good for cooking, flour
– Oak galls: ingredient in 
manuscript ink
– Japanese oak: Yamaha drums
• Rough, hard surface of oak gives the
drum a brighter and louder tone
compared to traditional drum
materials such as maple and birch.
Culture & Oaks
• Symbol of strength, endurance
• National tree of UK, Fr., Ger, & the
U.S.
• 723: St. Boniface cut down Thor’s
oak to show German’s
Christianities superiority.
• Joshua (Moses Apprentice) had a
covenant with the lord which he put
on a stone buried under an oak
Joshua at Jericho
Culture & Oaks
• Symbol of Zeus
• In Celtic mythology it’s
the tree of doors, a
gateway between worlds
• leaves symbolize rank in
the forces
– gold leaf = Major or Lt.
Commander
– silver leaf = Lt. Colonel or
Commander
• Cork oak
– Used to make wine stoppers
• Kind of Oak you use in aging barrels
matters
– As liquor ages some liquid is lost to
evaporation
– O2 comes in through barrel
– Wines take on vanillin and tannins from
barrels
• Factors: U.S. or European oak, age of wood,
cut of wood, dryness of wood, what forest,
• Cut corners: Soak in oak chips
• Barrel maker = cooper
English Oak
• Pedunculate oak
• Survives coppicing
– Cutting young
growths, and letting a
tree regrow.Pictured

• One in Lithuania is
1,500 y.o. oldest tree
in Europe
Coppicing
Bur Oak
• Blue Oak, Mossycup
• Biggest acorns
• Trunks can get to 9
feet across
• Masting 
Interdependence of
things
Charter oak
White oak clusters on
side of MD coin
"Mighty oaks from little
acorns grow."
• Late 1600’s
• James II was a jerk
and appointed
Edmond Andros(pic
below) to take back
the charters of the
colonies
• When he got to
Connecticut they hid
the charter in the
Charter oak
• Back to apples.
• Even though we imported
them most of us think of
them as a native.
– Emerson called it the
“American fruit”
– The only native is the Crab
apple
• Over the years J.A.Seed
& Apples would be
Disney-ized into a
cheaper sweetness than
they originally had.
• Disnified?
Here’s the thing
• Plant an apple seed from an
apple you get in the store
• Apples don’t “come true”
from seeds
• It’ll grow a gnarly tree with
gross sour apples
– O.K. for making hard cider,
which was the fate of many
apples until prohibition
– J.A.S. was bringing alcohol to
the frontier.
– People liked him
• 1 in 80K will be
usefully dif.
• Americans got into
finding those dif ones.
• A seedling kept
surviving mowing in
Jesse Hiatt’s orchard
in Iowa.
• So he said let it grow,
and that was the
original red Delicious.
– Then he got mad coin.
Comparison of Red Delicious apples grown in
cool night climate (Northwest: Top)
and warm night climate (East coast: Bottom).
Cool nights result in a more elongated
shape and a darker red color for the Red
Delicious apple.
• If you want an edible
plant you have to plant
a graft of an already
growing tree.
– Graft rootstock to scion
• Apple industry had a
big PR campaign in
the 1900’s to market
the fruit as
wholesome.
• Women’s Christian
Temperance League
had declared war on
it.
• Apple seeds
• Have a little cyanide
(You’d need to eat
several cupfuls to feel
the effects)
• Really bitter
• Genetics in seeds will
grow plants
dissimilar from
parents.
– Incredible variability
– It’s always changing
Cut an apple at it’s equator and
there’s a pentagram. Spooky.
• colonists saw the new
world as a place for
rebirth
• The old world apples
they brought didn’t
thrive, but seedlings
eventually took hold
• Since J.A.S. used seeds
not grafts he rolled
evolutionary dice
thousands of times and
we got many new types
of apples
– As dif from old world as
colonists were
The apple and us
Magritte
(above) &
Cezanne (left)
used apples in
their art
Symbolism
• An orchard in the pioneer
was humble proof of our
manifest destiny
• It was sweet in a time when
sugar was a luxury (& a
luxury tied to slavery).
– Swift called “Sweetness and
light” the two noblest of things.
– Shakespeare called spring the
sweet of the year.
– Sweet = fulfillment
– Dude, Sweet. (dude where’s
my car)
• Think of early
experiences of sugary
sweetness.
• Kids dedicate their lives
to the pursuit of it.
• It crosses cultural &
species borders
• It’s in mother’s milk
• Is it the prototype for all
desire?
Remember the evolution here
• Fruits don’t get sweet
until seeds inside are
mature
• Seeds are not sweet
• It’s a big bargain between
animals and fruits
• Is desire built into the
world?
• Vegetables don’t need
animals. Did you ever
hear of a forbidden
vegetable?
Greek Myths loved the apple
• Getting an apple was one of
Hercules labors
• Atalanta raced all her suitors to
avoid marriage. She outran all
but Hippomenes. He knew he
could not win so he used three
golden apples (gifts of
Aphrodite) to distract her.
• Paris of Troy had to give an
apple to the most beautiful
goddess and Aphrodite bribed
him with Helen of Troy and war
broke out.
• Later in the Renaissance
Christian artists would be
influenced by this and put
apples into Christianity
• The bible doesn’t call
the tree of knowledge
an apple tree.
• Apples don’t really
grow in the biblical
part of the world
anyway.
– Pomegranates do 
• And linked the idea of
apples to the idea of
the new world as a
second Eden
• Now protestants get down
on the grape as a tool of
the corrupt Catholic church
– And wine is bad too, the
bible says so
• The bible doesn’t have a
bad thing to say about
apples or hard cider
– So that’s okay then.
– Seriously puritans liked their
cider
• We didn’t call it hard cider
until the 20th c. when nonhard cider could be made
• Until then cider was all
hard cider.
• Corn liquor was on the
frontier first, but cider was
tastier and easier to
make.
• Every homestead had an
orchard.
• Even early prohibitionists
were glad to convert
alcoholics from grain to
apple spirits
• If you hear Jefferson or
Emerson going on about
this social fruit, there’s a
Dionysian echo.
• So what’s the insight of
J.A.S. and apples?
• J.A.S. was almost like the
ancient Greeks, nature
was an extension of the
divine.
• He preached as hard as
he lived.
• He was a guy who both
domesticated and was
wild
• Walked a line in the grey
area
• Rolled the dice, and the
world’s a sweeter place
Dangerous conclusion
• Grafting countless
orchards of a few
cultivars is essentially
cloning
• Its an evolutionary
holding pattern
• Pests, fungi, and disease
are in no such holding
pattern
• We have to artificially
maintain genetic diversity
in apples to make sure
they stay resistant
Because someone always asks
• Is a tomato a fruit or vegetable
• In a scientific sense it’s a fruit
– developed from the ovary in the base of the flower,
and contain the seeds of the plant
– Bean pods & cucumbers count as fruits too.
• Vegetables are things without seeds in the part
we eat. (radishes, tubers)
• In a culinary sense since they are used in a
savory, not sweet, way tomatoes are called
veggies.