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 Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2007 8:54 am
Louis XIV received his Dutch treat around 1714—a coffee tree for Paris’s Royal Botanical Garden, the Jardin des Plantes. Several years later a young naval officer, Gabriel Mathieu de Clieu, was in Paris on leave from Martinique, a French colony in the Caribbean. Imagining Martinique as a French Java, he requested clippings from his king’s tree. Permission denied.
Resolute, de Clieu led a moonlight raid of the Jardin des Plantes—over the wall, into the hothouse, out with a sprout.
Mission accomplished, de Clieu sailed for Martinique. He might have thought the hard part was over. He would have been wrong...
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Posted: Wed Nov 07, 2007 10:35 am
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Posted: Wed Nov 07, 2007 10:46 pm
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Posted: Fri Nov 09, 2007 12:21 pm
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