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A smell, a fragrance.

Browsing the Internet where there is a wealth of information on the senses, and books specifically dedicated to our sense of smell I find.
We all have a sense of smell from birth, and as we grow up to our teens we have would have taught our senses thousands of smells that can be instantly recognised just by a whiff with our nose.
Our sense of smell known as the Epithelium that contains smell receptors and which detect a presence of molecules in the air, our Epithelium is about 5cm but is that is small in comparison to say a dog whose sense of smell is up to five times larger and stronger than ours. We have all heard of qualities of the bloodhound and its ability to track its prey down just by smell.
How many times have we come home and as soon as we open the front door we can tell what is for dinner just by the smell that fills the air, and as our noses become accustomed to the smell it seems to wane in its intensity. This is because your sense of smell has become fatigued or used to the same odour and to refresh this sense of smell we need a break from that odour of say ten minutes. So move away from the house for a while, go down to the bottom of the garden and look around for a while and when you return your senses be refreshed and you will once again be able to pick up the scent. Of course some of us humans make our sense of smell weak by smoking or we dull our senses by drinking, so we only noticed the strong smells.
With flowers, it all comes down to enticing insects as a way of reproduction. A good strong scent is one sure way of transferring its pollen so the seeds can be produced.
A bee will be able to find your scented flower from quite a far distant and will hone in on it to reap its pollen. So as well as the flower with all its beauty we have scent as well to encourage the plant to produce pollen. It takes a lot of the plants energy to produce scent, so a plants scent is at its strongest on warm sunny days when the chances of tempting an insect are best. So you will not find too much scent when the bloom is only half open or in the evening. Better when it is fully open and the flower is receptive.
There are of course some plants that produce perfume in the night as well as the daytime and they being amongst many the honeysuckle and dianthus that can be pollinated by moths and the like.
We of course use our senses to assess a flower and the first character that we use is our eyes and what we see. Is it a beautiful bloom, flamboyant and well proportioned? If it is then we move in closer and start to use another of our senses, and that being the sense of smell. Does it give off a glorious perfume? If the answer to all these questions that we have in our minds as we approach the flower is yes, then the flower becomes desirable, if not then the flower do not hold our interest for long.
Memory is another great advantage to us. Some florists will make up a bridal bouquet and then give the blooms a quick spray of perfume to enhance the presentation of the bouquet, but we know by memory that a carnation does not smell of Chanel No5. It is the distinct clove perfume that we remember.
For too long we have sacrificed the perfume of the carnation in the hunt for the perfect bloom as a sight only perfection. Of course there are some renowned varieties such as Fragrant Ann, Pink Doris and Tony’s Choice and many others.
So you see, to meet the criteria of a perfect bloom it has to have beauty, flamboyance and perfume and once you get that formula then you got a winner. Anything short of that and it is an also ran.
Some flowers rely heavily on the colour of the bloom to attract insects like the sunflower; others rely solely on perfume such as heather, another way of attracting insects is colour like blue as this colour seems to have the most desire to insects and others use the smell of its leaves to help insects to find them such as herbs. But with the Dianthus it uses first its brilliance in bloom as well as its clove perfume. So we must strive to emulate this when hybridising carnations.
We have tasteless supermarket food, factory reared chickens, GM crops, remember Dolly the sheep. But we can put this right by growing our own vegetables and using free range food and organic produce. The public are more discerning these days and require that extra mile. So the next time you go to a flower show and a judge awards a first to a bloom that is not intact in all aspects, question them why they did it, and point out why you are not happy with the decision. We may then make them more alert to perfection.

Brian Yates
June 2008