An essay on "How to Make an Almond" by Jared Diamond (Part 1)

Evolution has become a way of life. The adaptation and desire to survive and produce offspring has formed the modern species of the human race.  Just like humans, animals have evolved to stay alive and conquer the environmental obstacles beset upon them.  In addition to humans and animals, plant species have also found the need to adapt to their surroundings.  Plants have become domesticated by humans to turn once inedible wild plants into crops found at the supermarket.  They have genetically changed to become more useful to consumers.  Plant species and fruits have also altered their physical genetics to more thoroughly disperse their seeds.   Evolution as well as the human impact on plant domestication has utilized the very best of wild plants and vegetables to create larger, more nutritional domesticated product for mankind.  Whether intentional or unintentional, it has become our best development of modern day plant species.

Plant domestication goes back over 10,000 years and is defined as the growing of plants while genetically causing them to become more useful to human consumers.  Farmers have done this with peas, olives, strawberries, pecans, and even poisonous almonds.  Not only were humans at work of changing the fruits, but also the fruits themselves.  Strawberry plants evolved through natural selection to become redder, sweeter, and juicier.  The main reason is that strawberry plants had to disperse and germinate their seeds elsewhere to survive in the wild. When the seeds of strawberries are green and unready to be planted, the berries remain sour and green, turning away hungry predators.  However, the redder and sweeter the strawberry got, the more birds came to disperse the ripe seeds.  “Many wild seeds evolved to be bitter, bad-tasting, or actually poisonous, in order to deter animals from eating them.” This example of natural selection has shown that many plants and animals have evolved on their own to become bigger, juicier, and more abundant.  When picking berries, humans generally pick the largest and sweetest ones, leaving the small withering fruits behind.  Those large berries are brought home, and end up germinating in the human’s garden.  This larger breed of fruit becomes more abundant, and the human only will plant that one, further domesticating it into a better variety of fruit.  What we call farming is the “preferential harvesting and planting of the most appealing largest plants.”