Every year, not far from here, farmers plant, tend and harvest hundreds of thousands of iris, daffodil and tulip bulbs.

All the information a person needs can be found at the Tulip Festival site, including a map of the various fields indicating where the flowers can be found.

Having read Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire (which covers four crops, including the tulip),

and watched the PBS program based on the book, I’ve become more interested in this particular plant. In an NPR interview, Pollan talks about the tulip,

“GWEN IFILL: Well, also, in talking about… You talk about the apple, but then you talk about the tulip, which is this icy, perfect, beautiful flower but yet drove people to madness in Holland.

MICHAEL POLLAN: Yeah, the story of the tulip is kind of amazing. I mean, this was the, tulip mania you’re referring to in Holland, and it…