When potato plants bloom, they send
up five lobed flowers that spangle fields like fat purple stars. Marie
Antoinette liked the blossoms so much that she put them in her hair. Her
husband, Louis XVI, put one in his buttonhole, inspiring a brief vogue in which
the French aristocracy swanned around with potato plants on their clothes. Flowers
were part of an attempt to persuade French farmers to plant and French diners
to eat this strange new species.
