Spring is turning to summer here in the Northern Hemisphere, and
the world is in blossom. Flowers always make me think of
Chairman Mao, who once vowed to “let a hundred flowers bloom” in
China, meaning that the nation would be healthier if a diversity
of ideas could compete for attention. But in real life,
sometimes the wrong flowers win the war of ideas, leading us up
a primrose path of misconceptions and misinformation. This
month, Jeopardy! champ Ken Jennings digs up all kinds of floral
falsehoods from the fertile soil of his mind, separating the
weeds of legend from the pick-me-up bouquet… of truth. Flower
Myth #1: Tulips Are Native to the Netherlands. I’ll grant you
that windmills, wooden shoes, and heroin are pretty great, but,
as signifiers of the Netherlands go, there’s everything else and
then there’s the mighty tulip. What could be more Dutch than a
field of brightly colored tulips, swaying in the wind? The
Netherlands still produces three billion tulips every year, and
its Keukenhof garden, near Li