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identity & the environment

onewhowalks's picture

Page 57:
"The reason you clone rather than plant from seed is because potatoes, like human chilren, are wildly heterozygous. Lloyd taught me that word when I was eight. It simply means that if you try to propagate a domesticated potato using seed, sexually, chances are it will not grow true to type. Instead it will regress, displaying a haphazard variety of characteristics, reminiscent of its uncultivated potato progenitors- it may prove superior to the parent plant or may be wildlty inferior. At eight, gazing up at my father's face, I didn't know which was worse."

Page 202:
"There were spots in the old floorboards that groaned underfoot, but she knew exactly wher they were. She'd kown them as a child, when seh slept down the hallway, keeping an ear out for the creaks and grunts that escaped from her parents' bedroom, and she knew them now, as an adult, ever since she and WIll had moved into the master bedroom. Knowing them so well, it was easy to avoid them."

Page 18:
"He blamed Momoko's peach tree for attracting those aphids. Wanted to chop it down, but Lloyd wouldn't let him. Momo means 'peach' in Japanese."