Who is John Chapman ("Johnny Appleseed") from The Botany of Desire and what is their importance?

John Chapman (1774-1847) was an American pioneer and legendary proponent of the apple tree and introduced the species to several locations in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. A legend in his own time, Chapman was reportedly generous and kind and used his position to promote conservation. His history is now shrouded in legend, but Chapman is generally acknowledged as having planted at least tens of thousands of apple seeds across a wide range of orchards. Additionally, he was an active missionary for the Swedenborgian Christian movement. The text presents Chapman as a highly eccentric man—nearly a crank—with a single-mindedness bordering on mania. Chapman held no romantic inclinations, was apparently devoid of sexual desire, felt that using animals for labor or convenience was wrong and apparently believed that grafting apple cultivars perverted nature's grand design. He preferred life outdoors to life indoors and reportedly often lived in logs, caves or hollow stumps in preference to a more-typical dwelling. Even so, Chapman was wealthy and possessed extensive land holdings. He traditionally went barefoot, wore a tin pot as a hat and dressed in a sort of burlap overcoat tied at the waist.