Taming Fruit: How Orchards have Transformed the Land, Offered Sanctuary, and Inspired Creativity

In this fact-packed treatise, Brunner (Winterlust) delivers a global yet overgeneralized account of orchards and their relationship to humans. Brunner “began tracing the history of orchards because I wanted to better understand the coevolution of fruit trees and humans. This shared process changed both participants.” Brunner moves chronologically from wild origins and godly gardens to present-day industrial farms, where economic and consumer demands have reduced fruit varieties and flavors while expanding size and shelf life. Along the way, he disperses plenty of cultivation and cultural knowledge: fruit remains found by the Jordan River are thought to date to paleolithic times, the overabundant and highly stylized gardens at Versailles could provide the Sun King’s court with 4,000 figs a day, and Egyptian gardens were spots for gods to hang out on Earth: “The appropriate gods for a garden depended on the type of fruit cultivated there.” (Grapes, for example, were harvested for Osiris.) Brunner shares several writers’ perspectives on gardens, too: Guy de Maupassant adored Monaco’s orange blossoms, and Goethe praised Italy’s lemon groves. Despite the abundance of information, though, things don’t come together to make a substantive bigger picture. Readers will be fascinated by the botanical anecdotes, but disappointed by where the path leads. (Nov.)