Focusing on the human relationship with plants, the author of Second nature uses botany to explore four basic human desires, sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control, through portraits of four plants that embody them, the apple, tulip, marijuana, and potato. Every school child learns about the mutually beneficial dance of honeybees and flowers; the bee collects nectar and pollen to make honey and, in the process, spreads the flowers' genes far...

Attending an art class in the Netherlands, Violet journeys through the flower gardens, windmills and canals of Holland to investigate the untimely disappearance of her friend's father, a renowned botanist whose absence is linked to a rare black tulip.