The Botany of Desire Page #4

The repository of all

the genetic diversity

Of the apple in america

was in the cider orchard.

Today it's in these collections

That are maintained by

some visionary individuals

Who understand the importance of

preserving this biodiversity.

There's a vicious circle

That we get into, which is,

we have monocultures

In the field,

and monocultures on the plate.

Monocultures of taste.

Fruit now has to

compete with soda.

So it has got to be super-sweet,

And the modern apples all are

very sweet --

We have apples that, as one

critic said of the delicious,

It has "sweetness

without dimension."

The problem is, it's boring,

Sweetness --

if that's all you get.

In lebanon,

new hampshire,

One grower is trying to solve

that problem

By reaching back

into the apple's past.

Stephen wood is the owner of

poverty lane orchards.

He used to grow mostly

standard varieties,

Like macs and cortlands --

But found he couldn't match

the prices

Of the big commercial growers.

We realized

in the late '80s

That what we'd always done

Wasn't going to work

any longer,

And that we either had to change

quite dramatically

What we were doing, or stop

growing apples altogether.

But for wood,

Giving up on his orchard

seemed inconceivable.

You know, some people adore

antique clocks,

I adore apple trees.

How are we doing on water core?

We started some grafting trials

Of what I guess you could call

"antique" varieties --

Varieties that are not

commonly grown anymore,

But once were.

This is wickson.

This apple originated

in the pacific northwest

In the late 19th century.

It's got a beautiful acidity.

This is pomme grise.

It has very low acid,

high sugar,

And a sort of...

A sort of nutty flavor.

This apple is

calville blanc d'hiver.

It's got a little bit of

sweetness behind the acid.

You look at 17th-century

french still-lifes,

This is the apple you see

Beside the dead pheasant

and the bottle of wine.

There's a huge number of

apple varieties --

It's almost infinite.

But it's tough to

make a living

Selling only

antique eating apples.

So wood turned his attention to

Another lost chapter

in apple history --

Most of his orchard

is now producing apples...

For hard cider.

It is a gamble to plant

Acres and acres

of inedible apples...

Many of the best cider apples

are disgusting --

Bitter, astringent apples.

The decision to plant

Not just a few trees,

But thousands and thousands

of those trees,

Could be quite a good joke

if the cider doesn't make it,

Because these apples are not

going to wind up

In a kid's lunch box --

There's no secondary market

for this stuff.

Wonderful breakfast drink.

We are trying,

with a few other colleagues,

Basically to create a category

in the u.S. Wine trade

Of "fine ciders."

I think we're doing

quite well in that,

But the jury is still out.

There are a lot of fruits

That have gotten ahead in life

By being sweet

and gratifying the sweet tooth

Of mammals like us,

But there's something

about the apple,

You know -- it's so iconic

In western civilization,

And so enduring

in its relationship,

And its ability, really, to

gratify our changing desires --

For alcohol, and for

a wonderfully sweet food --

That my guess is, it will

succeed for many years to come.

The mystery is,

Why things that

bees regard as beautiful,

We also regard

as beautiful --

I mean, what are the odds that

we would have the same taste

As this little bug?

When I say the bee has a concept

of beauty,

I mean, I'm being metaphorical.

But the bee and ourselves

have a lot in common.

We really like symmetry,

We like certain patterns

Of color, and certain scents --

we agree about scent, as well.

The bee loves this flower

and moves toward it,

And this flower has evolved

to attract it.

Well, this plant has also

evolved to attract us.

To the extent that

a flower can gratify

Our ideas of a beautiful color,

A beautiful shape,

a beautiful smell,

It will dominate the landscape,

Dominate the flower industry,

Get many more copies

of itself made,

And take over the world.

And few flowers

Have traveled the road from

obscurity to fame

More spectacularly than

the tulip.

59 years ago,

I saw first tulip

in my life.

And that was in the garden

of my father.

And now my whole life

is with tulips.

Nobody knows tulips

better than the dutch --

And few dutchmen know them

better than joop zonneveld,

But he has a curious way of

describing their effect on him.

You look after every

tulip, step by step,

You get the tulip fever --

It becomes worse, worse,

and worse.

For me, it was something,

it's in me, it never stops.

Zonneveld's been

a tulip buyer, a salesman,

And now he's conservator

Of one of the most famous

tulip gardens in the world --

Hortus bulborum

in the netherlands,

A showplace for

the remarkable diversity

Of this sometimes

underappreciated flower.

In this garden,

We have 2,300 varieties.

You have dark purple colors,

You have almost black tulips,

You have lily flowering tulips,

There's a tulip

that has the shape like this,

Like a lily flower.

You have yellow, red,

Pink, orange, bicolored,

Single earlies,

single late, double late --

So there are so many things

in the tulips

That once you start,

You discover every day --

even myself, I discover

Every day new things.

Today, zonneveld is

giving a tour

To photographer ruth dundas

and writer justin spring --

Two americans who have

Come to hortus to gather

material for a new book.

This is a lovely

viridiflora.

Tulips are about the last

subject they thought

Would ever capture

their interest.

I have to say, honestly,

That when I first started

to photograph,

The last thing I wanted to

photograph was tulips.

It's pretty boring,

It's a lollipop

on top of a stick,

You know, you get

different colors, but that's it.

It's only once

you come to gardens

Such as the hortus bulborum here

That you start to understand

That this is

a very varied flower,

And it's adapted and mutated

Into many different forms.

It's a lot of fun

to photograph,

That there's

a constant challenge

To look into this flower

And be able to see new color,

new light.

You can take a bouquet of tulips

And photograph it

every hour of the day.

And it's something quite

different each time.

Perfect, gorgeous.

It just seems so amazing

that you have

This extraordinary variety

that's been cultivated

Over centuries,

and somehow you grew up

Not knowing a thing about it.

Flowers began

flaunting their beauty

Long before there were people.

It was more than

100 million years ago

When the class of plants

that flowers belong to --

The angiosperms --

first appeared on the earth.

The great revolution in

natural history

Is the rise of the angiosperms.

This is the class of plants

that makes conspicuous flowers,

Forms fruit and seed.

This was a new way of doing

business in nature.

The flower of

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