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" In short, he felt himself to be in love in the right place, and was ready to endure a great deal of predominance, which, after all, a man could always put down when he liked. Sir James had no idea that he should ever like to put down the predominance of this handsome girl, in whose cleverness he delighted. Why not? A man's mind–what there is of it–has always the advantage of being masculine,–as the smallest birch-tree is of a higher kind than the most soaring palm,–and even his ignorance is of a sounder quality. Sir James might not have originated this estimate, but a kind Providence furnishes the limpest personality with a little gum or starch in the form of tradition. "
― George Eliot , Middlemarch
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" For about 48 weeks of the year an asparagus plant is unrecognizable to anyone except an asparagus grower. Plenty of summer visitors to our garden have stood in the middle of the bed and asked, 'What is this stuff? It's beautiful!' We tell them its the asparagus patch, and they reply, 'No this, these feathery little trees.' An asparagus spear only looks like its picture for one day of its life, usually in April, give or take a month as you travel from the Mason-Dixon Line. The shoot emerges from the ground like a snub nose green snake headed for sunshine, rising so rapidly you can just about see it grow. If it doesn't get it's neck cut off at ground level as it emerges, it will keep growing. Each triangular scale on the spear rolls out into a branch until the snake becomes a four foot tree with delicate needles. Contrary to lore, fat spears are no more tender or mature than thin ones. Each shoot begins life with its own particular girth. In the hours after emergence, it lengthens but does not appreciably fatten. To step into another raging asparagus controversy, white spears are botanically no different from their green colleagues. White shoots have been deprived of sunlight by a heavy mulch pulled up over the plant's crown. European growers go to this trouble for consumers who prefer the stalks before they've had their first blush of photosynthesis. Most Americans prefer the more developed taste of green. Uncharacteristically, we're opting for the better nutritional deal here also. The same plant could produce white or green spears in alternate years, depending on how it is treated. If the spears are allowed to proceed beyond their first exploratory six inches, they'll green out and grow tall and feathery like the house plant known as asparagus fern, which is the next of kin. Older, healthier asparagus plants produce chunkier, more multiple shoots. Underneath lies an octopus-shaped affair of chubby roots called a crown that stores enough starch through the winter to arrange the phallic send-up when winter starts to break. The effect is rather sexy, if you're the type to see things that way. Europeans of the Renaissance swore by it as an aphrodisiac and the church banned it from nunneries. "