Each of the chapters that follows takes the form of a journey that either starts out, stops by, or ends up in my garden but along the way ventures far afield, both in space and historical time: to seventeenth-century Amsterdam, where, for a brief, perverse moment, the tulip became more precious than gold; to a corporate campus in St. Louis, where genetic engineers are reinventing the potato; and back to Amsterdam, where another, far less lovely flower has made itself, again, more precious than gold. I also travel to potato farms in Idaho; follow my species’ passion for intoxicating plants down
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