There's some clever bonsai symbolism going on in Dune

Give the plant stylist a raise, they did their homework.

Bonsai pals: I am back. Thank you for bearing with me during a rough few weeks; Fire Escape Bonsai resumes now in earnest, with more to come on where I’ve been and what’s been going on with the trees. But first we have to talk about Dune.

“The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced.” That’s one of the stupefying, life-recontextualizing toss-off lines in Frank Herbert’s Dune, published in 1965. Dune (the novel) has been a sacred text for me for almost half my life, so I’m happy and relieved to report that Dune (the 2021 film) nailed it. I’ve seen it twice now, and both viewings felt like watching the first Star Wars for the first time: wow, so this is what movies can do. Denis Villeneuve and team hew close to the source material but tell a story of their own design. And whoever was responsible for the plant props deserves recognition, because there’s some clever bonsai symbolism going on in Dune. Mild, mostly-plot-irrelevant spoilers ahead.

Not five minutes into the film, just one line of dialogue passes before we see Jessica and Paul Atreides together at the breakfast table, with Paul, our hero, flanked by two of what is ultimately four bonsai on display in the room. In the next shot we get a better view of the tree to Paul’s right.

We see three worlds in Dune, Part One: the Atreides homeworld of Caladan; Arrakis, from the perspective of feudal lords in a galaxy-spanning imperium; and then Arrakis from the perspective of the local population, the Fremen. The bonsai is framed by a circular window. Paul’s first world on his journey.

The Atreides are an ascendant voice in the imperium’s space congress and popular with the common people. They’re the good guys of our epic tale, and in true epic fashion, it doesn’t take long for tragedy to fall on them all.

Three of the bonsai in this room appear to be junipers styled with an old school “Darth Vader helmet,” as many American bonsai people describe it (not always with praise, but that’s a story for another time). All four trees are very conventional, in bonsai terms: dense sculpted foliage pads arranged along a trunk that follows textbook ratios to the letter. I don’t mean that as an insult; these are beautiful trees, and I kept pausing the scene to drink them in. They’re perfect plants for our heroes.

There’s a meta layer, too. Trees in bonsai pots are usually heavy drinkers. The pots are small, the root mass is large, and the soil is free draining so it doesn’t hold much water. During the height of summer you may have to water a tree two or three times a day to keep it from going thirsty. Caladan is a lush temperate planet with a vast ocean—a stark contrast to the desert heat of Arrakis, where water conservation is so vital to survival that the Fremen wear water recycling suits that collect the wearer’s sweat and urine. These high maintenance, high society bonsai specimens could never survive on Arrakis. HMMM.

Scrub ahead 40 minutes. The Atreides have arrived on Arrakis. That’s their brutalist pyramid palace in the background. We find Paul between trees once again.

Paul comes across a gardener who’s watering this row of palm trees with the measured hand of a Chipotle burrito builder. Even in the palace, Arrakis’ new ruling family must take pains to conserve water.

”I didn’t know date palms could even be found out here,” Paul says. “These aren’t indigenous,” the gardener replies. “They can’t survive without me. Each one of these drinks every day the equivalent of five men. 20 palm trees. A hundred lives.” A horticultural demonstration of the ruthless logic of life on a desert world.

“You’re not on Caladan anymore, twerp.”

The book doesn’t give much detail on the exact climate of Arrakis beyond deathly hot, but later in the film we hear an announcement in the spice fields that the temperature will hit 140 degrees. I’m assuming that’s Fahrenheit, as 140 Celsius is hot enough to bake a turkey. Herbert goes by Kelvin in the book, because of course he did, but 140 Kelvin is -200 Fahrenheit, so we can safely rule that out. (By the way, did you know that this past summer, temperatures in Melbourne reached 140? 🙃)

ANYWAY, that is indeed a survivable temperature for date palms, but likely not without human irrigation and protection. I’m no palm expert but these palms don’t look happy. So when you listen to the gardener, it seems the height of hubris to attempt to grow them on Arrakis. “Should we remove them?” Paul asks. “Save the water?”

“No,” the gardener replies. “These are sacred. Old dream.” But to who?

In the book this scene is a conversation between Jessica and the family doctor, Yueh. Yueh loves the Atreides but comes from a lower class, and he has some everyman moments, like this one, where he points out that the Fremen probably do look at these palms inside the palace gates and think, how dare you waste resources like this? “Some of those people look at the trees hopefully,” Jessica wanly responds. “They hope but some dates will fall,” Yueh jabs, “except it’s the wrong season.” (One of the reasons I love Dune is how well Herbert skewers class dynamics like in this exchange. Yueh’s been on this planet for the same five minutes Jessica has. Where does he get off saying this about the locals?)

Now we jump to our third world in the film, the Arrakis of the Fremen. Jessica and Paul arrive at an ecological testing station from a long-abandoned terraforming project.

We close in on a portulacaria afra, aka elephant bush, a South African shrub often used for bonsai. You can get a pre bonsai exactly like this one for 15 bucks. Good beginner’s tree!

Elephant bush thrives in hot, dry climates. As a succulent, it stores water in its leaves and can go weeks without a drop of water. But like the palms it would probably struggle on Arrakis; it’s just too hot. Sure enough, the leaves of this tree have shriveled and its branching is sparse.

The original settlers of Arrakis planned to turn the planet into a verdant world—until they discovered the spice that extends life, gives humans precognition, and makes interstellar travel possible. Spice is dependent on the desert; it’s actually the poop of baby sandworms that greedily gobble up water reserves in aquifers deep below the surface. Terraform the planet and the spice disappears. The settlers picked the spice.

Neither the film nor the book make it clear exactly when spice was discovered, but in the greater Dune series timeline it would have been at least 10,000 years ago. So: 1) good build quality on that testing station, and 2) Dune does a delicate dance with the idea of native species.

The Fremen have long awaited a messiah who will free the planet’s water and transform the desert into a garden paradise. They also consider the sandworm sacred. (“Bless the maker and his water.”) Neither the imperium nor the Fremen are truly native to Arrakis. In a later Herbert novel we learn the sandworms were transplanted from another planet, too.

So what does all this MEAN? I’m not sure. Dune is about dynamics more than answers, and that includes the dynamic of human ecology. We shape our world and our world shapes us. Or as Herbert puts it, “A process cannot be understood by stopping it.”

Damn, that man could aphorism.

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[Not] tree reading

For more Dune commentary that you never asked for, professional nerd Max Read has made an impressive set of Dune annotations. [Read Max]

You may or may not know that I wrote a food trivia game? Well it’s here and you can buy it! Taste Test: 200 Food Trivia Questions for Food Nerds is like Trivial Pursuit but for people who argue about burrito styles. Makes a great gift for people you love or insufferable assholes you want to take down a peg. [Available online and where fine games are sold]