Staircases inside Amazon’s spheres. The spheres will be accessible to Amazon employees only, but the company may eventually allow public tours. CreditIan C. Bates for The New York Times
Just off a remote stretch of road here, near wineries, horse stables and farms, Amazon is secretly growing something, but it’s not what Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, calls the “tiny seeds” that could become the company’s next big businesses.
No, Amazon is growing actual plants, more than 3,000 species of them spread around a one-acre greenhouse a half-hour’s drive from Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle. There are carnivorous pitcher plants, exotic philodendrons and orchids from Ecuador that resemble the menacing flora from “Little Shop of Horrors.”