Golden Potatoes

An old legend says that in the second half of the seventeenth century Smil Zdebora Janovský, owner of Horní Staňkov, had an alchemical laboratory in the local manor cellar and discovered how to grow gold in a field. He first salted the soil thoroughly, then cast seeds of future gold from lead and sowed them. Every day he watered them with an alchemical liquid-manure elixir he made himself, called “merkuryáš”. The plants resembled ordinary potatoes, but those with white flowers bore pure-silver tubers, while those flowering red produced gold nuggets. A great treasure and the recipe are supposedly walled up in the château cellars. After Smil’s death, his son Jindřich Viktorin tried in vain to continue the work, then sold the manor. The plants supposedly grew wild but never entirely died out. From time to time the true red-flowering, gold-bearing plants appear among ordinary potatoes, and lumps of gold or coins coated in pitch can be dug beneath them.