Leon can do anything with plants; he is the ultimate gardener. Tending his precious cargo of tropical trees and flowers while Europe sinks into hell, he never leaves his beautiful old palm-house because of his near-fatal lung illness. He projects his thoughts into his beloved plants, with whom he is far happier than he is with people. His life is haunted by loss, of his mother of the young Asian girl he loved one summer in his childhood, of the perfection that he can find only in the imaginary order of scientific classification. In the ruined city, with barely enough fuel to keep his palm house heated, this fragile life in its glass sanctuary is threatened by dangers: an Asian princess offers him a job in the real tropics; the palm-house is threatened with closure, and his fantasies are becoming uncontrolled