And the first hour is always spent figuring out what you're asking...

tulips.

Half the fun of the quiz is in the deciphering.

Um, isn't it?

Oh well...anyway, nope, it's not tulips. That much more famous speculative mania preceded the one we're talking about.

Rubber-tree plants.

(He tried to shift it, but everyone knows he can't.)

Umm... hemp.

Flax.

As I recall, the siege was not of Noriega's palace, but of the Papal Nuncio, in which the Defenders of Freedom in the Western Hemisphere put the squeeze on the Panamanian strongman by blasting the place with Queensreich. Go ahead, let your chest swell with pride.

Um, hemp?

From Asia... erm... durian? Durian liquor was big in them there olden days, I hear.

Jute. (Hey, juuuute... don't make a mattt...)

cran-apples

Despite the medley of musical answers from Rory, nobody's scored yet.

One interesting note: James I tried to foster the industry for which this item is essential in colonial Virginia, back in the early 17th century, but when the colonists figured out that tobacco was a much more profitable crop, the idea was pretty much abandoned.

Silk worms.

Boxjam: close, but no Virginia-tobacco cigar.

While I am itching to guess railroad bonds and swamp land in Florida, I suspect boxjam has it sewn up.

But just in case...

that new awful kind of mosquito

Did I ever tell you about the day I embarrassed myself by posting late, twice?

Hops

Grape vines

pears

barley

plums

sugar cane

soybean

acidophilus cultures

medicinal leeches

puppies

Correction: apparently the playlist (http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/DOCUMENT/950206.htm) did not include Queensreich. I hang my head in shame, both at my error and the fact that I probably would have enjoyed hearing G&R's "Paradise City" at 120dB.

cochineal bugs.

It's not an insect. Although there's an insect connection.

'shrooms

milkweed

Someday we'll find it, the insect connection,
The lovers, the dreamers and me.

apples?

There's also a well-known nursery rhyme that names this thing.

boughs?

curds & whey

mouse tails.

tuffets

silk spiders

spiders?

Think of it as part one of a two-part process in the creation of something valuable.

opium poppies
Non-U.S. residence is Emerald City

oysters

crack corn

well done

I agree, but what's the oyster nursery rhyme?

Forget the famous non-U.S. residence...

I'll also say that boxjam really was quite close at one point -- just one step away from the answer.

inch worm.

or itsy-bitsy spider.

I'll add that the bonus point refers to what was called a "plantation," of these, which -- after their commercial utility didn't pan out -- later became the formal garden of a very famous home.

Well, call me confused. I thought "with silver bells, and cockle shells, and pretty maids all in a row" made the case for oysters, step one in producing pearls, and most pearls come from Asia and are seeded, but I didn't see an insect connection unless the domestics were wiped out by sea lice. Now we're back to silk worms having been close.

Earthworms?

It's a living thing, but not an animal. However, it is vital in the raising of certain animals for certain purposes.

honeybees?

scratch that, I can't figure out which animals rely on honeybees (uh, bears trained for circus stunts?)

wait, it's not an insect. So perhaps it is a plant that honeybees like, that makes honey taste so good. um, not alfalfa because that's not going to be cultivated in some way that makes a private residence striking. something from asia. jasmine? i don't even know what that looks like.

um, but there's no "jasmine" nursery rhyme that I can think of--nor any honeybee one. where's mother goose when you need her?

gooseberry?

elderberry? Is that the same thing as gooseberry?

morning glories?

sunflowers?

I shall reveal all tomorrow...

clover

The answer we were looking for was mulberry trees. Silkworms are fed on mulberry trees, so the various attempts made between the early 1600s all the way through the early 19th century to foster/nurture native English and/or American silk production had mulberry planting as a key element. In the early 19th century, there really was a speculative bubble on live mulberry trees.

The bonus? The large mulberry plantation which failed as a source of silkworm-chow became part of the Buckingham Palace gardens.

The bobblehead goes, in the end, to boxjam, who after all got us to silkworms, and named a number of "berry" items to boot.

'scuse me, that should have said "silkworms are fed on mulberry *leaves*"

It is worth noting that American monkeys and weasels are said to have been much fitter during the mulberry bush boom years.

well, I'll bee

Good lord, of course. I even vaguely remember reading about that. The house I grew up in had a mulberry tree. As a kid I used to get red feet from walking near it in berry season (late summer, when I always wandered around barefoot), but I didn't like the berries then - no-one in our family did, apart from my uncle, who would take home buckets of them after visiting. Then on a trip home in my 30s I discovered a taste for them... and then moved out of the country, and my parents moved house. So now I'm doomed to eating mulberries only during trips to France in late summer, and how often is that likely to happen?

Oh, yeah, mulberries. Silk worms eat mulberry. I remembered it as gooseberry.

Monkeys and weasels were also said to have been earlier risers way back when.

Oh, crap, it was the cobbler's bench, not the metrically similar mulberry bush, around which ran the monkey and the weasel.

No, there are two versions of the monkey and the weasel. I've heard both. And in fact, the cobbler's bench/mulberry bush formulations were debated in an episode of NYPD Blue where Dennis Franz was bugged by his inability to extract a coherent hermeneutic from the song.