The Potato Whisperer: Surprising wisdom from a greenish gardener.

• Author: Seavey, Todd

Botany of Desire, by Michael Pollan, New York: Random House, 271 pages, $24.95

IN BOTANY OF DESIRE, Michael Pollan examines the coevolution of plants and human beings from what he acknowledges is "a somewhat unconventional angle: I take the plant's point of view seriously." The plants whose perspectives he adopts include apples, tulips, marijuana, and genetically engineered potatoes, all of which have been found in his own garden at one time or another.

Human beings tend to think of themselves as the uncontested rulers of the natural world, especially when lording it over subjects unlikely to fight back, such as fruits and vegetables. Pollan's central insight is that those plants aren't as passive as they seem. In fact, in their mindless way, they're every bit as selfish about the relationship as we are. Plants use various means to entice animals to do the work of spreading plant genes, whether the animals are human farmers or pollen-bearing honeybees. "In a coevolutionary bargain like the one struck by the bee and the apple tree," Pollan writes, "the two parties act on each other to advance their individual interests but wind up trading favors: food for the bee, transportation for the apple genes."

If you're a plant, offering such rewards as sweetness, nutritional value, or intoxication is a great way to get animals to plant your seeds, give you water, or destroy the weeds that surround you. Being domesticated further increases your odds of survival and your likelihood of having descendants. Just ask apples. Now we grow Newtown Pippins, Baldwins, Golden Russets, and Jonathans, all derived from the small, bitter, wild apples that originated in Kazakhstan.

Pollan notes that this perspective runs counter to both the usual scientific industrial narrative about our relationship to nature, in which we take what we want from the world and thus improve it, and the usual environmentalist fable, in which we exploit a passive nature until it collapses, destroying ourselves in the process. In reality, it takes two to tango, and sometimes your partner is a potato.

Each of the four plants Pollan examines yields a fable about this dance, though Pollan presents his morals very gently and subtly. (One gets the impression that he would be perfectly happy if most readers came away remembering this as merely a pleasant, funny book about vegetables.) From apples, Pollan derives a lesson about how we conceal or mythologize the history of plants. Johnny...