When potato plants bloom, they send up
five-lobed flowers that spangle fields like fat purple stars. By some
accounts, 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. The flowers were part of an attempt to persuade French farmers to plant and French diners to eat this strange new species.
-Smithsonian
