too many words by laura lemay

p. somniferum

A long but very interesting article from Harper’s by Michael Pollan about growing opium poppies{.broken_link} in your very own garden. Papaver Somniferum seeds are entirely legal to buy, plant, and grow, as long as you don’t actually know what you’re doing, in which case the DEA will come after you (“your door is going to be kicked” says an agent in the article). In fact, simply by reading this article, you are probably learning too much.

I think this article turned into a section in Pollan’s The Botany of Desire, which is a great book about how plants evolve to make themselves more appealing to people.