There are many plants with flowers or leaves that mimic familiar scents. The dark red flowers of chocolate cosmos (Cosmos atrosanguineus) really do smell chocolaty.
The common names of plants often refer to the fragrances of leaves or flowers—for instance, pineapple sage. In the Latin species name, there are sometimes hints that a plant has a scent. Following the genus names are helpful specific epithets, such as odora, odorata, aromatica, and fragrans. The Latin species name for a plant with the odor of citrus could be citriodora (lemon verbena is Aloysia citriodora—the crushed leaves smell like a sharp version of the plant’s namesake). But those helpful clues are few and far between.
Attempts to describe the way flowers smell in print often rely on nice but unhelpful words such as “luxurious,” “warm,” “exotic,” “innocent,” “elegant,” or “romantic.” When you get really stuck, you may characterize a scent by your reaction to it: “delighted,” “intoxicated,” or “revolted.” With botanical scents, however, it is not a feeling but the actual aroma I want to know more about.
Like the names of colors—olive green, sky blue, fuchsia—the words for smells often rely on analogies. We conjure tastes when we describe smells with words like “sour” or “bitter” (and, of course, “sweet”). There are floral scents that are so well known and recognizable that they appear again and again in this book—for instance, clove, rose, honey, and vanilla. There are also highly specific scents, such as that of the chocolate cosmos (Cosmos atrosanguineus), whose daisy-like dark brown blossoms really do smell like cocoa powder; there are even some orchids with flowers that are dead ringers for that confection. Helichrysum italicum, the curry plant, smells exactly like curry. The banana shrub (Magnolia figo) is named for its banana-smelling spring blooms. The aroma of the dangling flower clusters of the greenhouse plant, pink ball tree (Dombeya wallichii) smell like buttery yellow cake. One whiff might take you back to Grandma’s kitchen.
Smells conjure memories. You know how on a rainy day there can be a hint of old smoke from the fireplace? That smell might remind you of gathering with friends and family around a fire. Surprisingly, you can trigger that sense memory by sniffing the tiny white flowers of the Caucasian daphne shrub, because the ever-blooming Daphne caucasica smells clearly (to me) like old wood smoke.
A whiff of a familiar odor often takes me back. Lilacs always make me think of my late mother, who, like me, loved their natural floral fragrance. I used to cut blooming stems from my garden to bring to her on Mother’s Day. She couldn’t get enough, and, when I asked her to describe the smell of these beloved blossoms, she answered, simply, “Heaven.” Fortunately, it is said that, of all the senses, smell is the last one to leave us as we age. That may or may not be true, but olfactory neurons are among the few nerve cells in the body that regenerate, replacing themselves once every month or two.
Sometimes, a plant’s common and Latin names—for example, lemon verbena, Aloysia citriodora—will give you a hint about whether it will have a familiar fragrance. This shrub has been trained into a standard or tree shape by Gelene Scarborough.
Plants’ fragrances can be grouped into a number of categories. There are the fruity smells of purple heliotrope; the heavy scents of citrus blossom and the double white gardenia; the indolic white stars of stephanotis and Confederate jasmine; herbal/green–scented geraniums; and the intense, dark, penetrating, musky, wet earth aroma of leafy patchouli.
Hesperis is known by many names, including night-scented gilliflower, which refers to its clove and powder scent that wafts through the evening air.
The carrion-scented flowers of a tropical epiphytic carnivorous pitcher plant, a Nepenthes alata hybrid, do not smell good to us. The slippery edges of the pitchers are coated with sweet nectar to attract and catch insect prey.
Boxwood can be described as having the odor of cat urine, but designer, architect, and expert boxwood grower Andrea Filippone says Buxus sempervirens ‘Varder Valley’ (grown as the hedge in the foreground and above the wall) does not smell.
ANIMALIC
There are plants with scents that are more than a little lively. Many of the VOCs that I call animalic are not very attractive to us at all. Certain plants mimic decaying matter or, even more vividly, rotting flesh (and may even look the part, with dark red flowers streaked with white to imitate meat and fat). They smell even worse, with a putrid odor evolved to attract carrion-eating flies and beetles. Ellen scanned the flowers and hanging pitchers of a tropical carnivorous Nepenthes hybrid. She said they smelled like dried blood and decay, doubtless to attract specific pollinators.
Other plants may smell bad to repel pests. Why, for instance, do certain leaves smell like feline urine? Perhaps boxwood’s odiferous foliage evolved to discourage an enemy in the nation of Georgia, from which Buxus sempervirens hails. Maybe mice once tunneled through the snow to try to eat evergreen boxwood leaves. However unlikely the mouse theory is, animals, including deer, rarely nibble boxwood.
It’s easy to live with the acrid boxwood odor. The plant mostly smells when the leaves are brushed or in hot summer sunlight.
Ambergris, or whale vomit, is used as a source of fragrance and as a fixative in perfume that slows evaporation and is, therefore, very valuable—it goes for ten thousand dollars per pound. There are musky botanical substitutes for so-called amber.
As you’ll see, the odor of vomit is not unheard of in the plant world, for instance, with ginkgo fruits. But I’m sure that isn’t a smell you’ll track down for your garden.
Gingko biloba is a popular street tree in the United States. The plants are dioecious, that is, separate individuals have male or female organs. Most of the trees planted are male clones and do not bear fruit. A few females sneak through, however, and drop their messy fruits, which are prized in some Asian cultures. It is not the decaying pulp, which smells like vomit, that is desirable. It’s the nut-like seed inside, which is made into a dessert.
Angelica archangelica has celery-scented stems and roots that are a botanical substitute for musk.
NAME:Angelica and Abelmoschus species (angelica and musk mallow)
TYPE OF PLANT: herbaceous perennial
PART OF PLANT: roots
PRIMARY SCENT: musk
SECONDARY SCENTS: celery, cucumber
Musk was once harvested from mammals and valued at twice the price of gold. Today, it is usually synthesized in labs or derived from botanical sources, including the roots of two plants, Abelmoschus moschatus or Angelica archangelica.
Abelmoschus moschatus, musk mallow, is a tender perennial that likes hot climates. Moschatus means “musky,” referring to the smell of the roots. The species grows in a shrubby clump bearing small yellow flowers with purple centers. Ornamental cultivars with red, pink, or red-orange flowers are available to grow as annuals. Fruits up to three inches long follow, and also smell musky. A. esculentus, the edible okra, has large, showy yellow flowers that resemble the musk mallow’s. These plants, along with cotton, flowering maple, hibiscus, hollyhocks, rose of Sharon, and an unlikely distant cousin, cacao, are members of the Malvaceae family.
Another botanical source, Angelica archangelica, is a tall, opportunistic biennial native to Greenland that has become naturalized in the United States. It pops up in moist spots on disturbed land, and in my garden. Weedy or not, it is considered by some to be valuable for possible medicinal properties, and it has been popular for centuries for the stems, which smell like celery and can be steeped in sugar syrup to make a candy and cake decorations. The flower heads are in umbels, or flat clusters of florets like those of Queen Anne’s lace.
There are several ornamental biennial relatives: Angelica pachycarpa has gorgeous shiny green leaves. A. polymorpha var. sinensis, lady’s ginseng, with contrasting purple stems, is used in traditional Chinese medicine. A. gigas is an ornamental cousin with beet-red buds and flowers. A. stricta ‘Purpurea’ has royal-purple new growth, renewed with every emerging leaf, and paler purple flowers in the plant’s second, final year.
Many aroids have flowers that look and smell like animal flesh. One exception is hardy Arisaema candidissimum, which smells like a hybrid tea rose. I grow these from seeds and store some dry in pots in a cool basement over the winter.
PART OF PLANT: late spring to summer flowers (inflorescence)
PRIMARY SCENT: many, carrion
SECONDARY SCENTS: by variety, floral/sweet, lemon, putrid to none
You are probably familiar with frost-tender plants such as Caladium, calla lilies, Philodendron, and the elephant ears: Alocasia, Colocasia, and Xanthosoma. What these aroids have in common is a unique flower structure, or inflorescence. It consists of a spadix bearing the actual tiny flowers, of which there may be dozens. The spadix is often partially or fully shrouded by a leaf-like spathe. The spadix may be white, but the spathe is often colorful.
Some of these plants have flowers that smell bad. The voodoo lily is one; the dead horse arum lily and the dreaded corpse flower are others. In many of the bad-smelling aroid inflorescences, the spathes have a certain look. They are reddish brown and streaked or spotted with contrasting colors.
The spathe of the putrid-smelling voodoo lily, Sauromatum venosum (syn. Typhonium venosum), is brownish on the outside, and spotted—another impersonation of meat. Helicodiceros muscivorus, the dead horse arum lily, is an ornamental plant native to Corsica, Sardinia, and the Balearic Islands. Dracunculus vulgaris is a similar plant, with a look and an odor that have inspired a host of common names including dragon arum and stink lily.
Many aroids, like the Amorphophallus, are from subtropical and tropical regions. These are primarily grown in temperate zones as temporary summer foliar accents or as houseplants. But they do flower, and a couple of Alocasia have fragrant blooms. A. odora has “smell” in its name, and that smell has been described as something between lilacs and plastic—more so at night. A hybrid, A. ‘Portodora’, has very large, ribbed, spear-shaped leaves with wavy edges and prominent veins. Up close, its flower smells a bit medicinal, but, from five, ten, or thirty feet away, the fragrance is sweet and familiar. Is it penny candy? Cherry cough drops? I’ve got it: red strawberry licorice.
My favorite aroids are the hardy woodland Arisaema, jackin-the-pulpits—prized for their floral forms. They look as if they would smell bad—they are often reddish brown and streaked—but most do not have much of an odor, and one smells very nice, like a hybrid tea rose. That one, A. candidissimum, is striped white on pink or white on greenish white.
No two hooded inflorescences of the skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) have the same coloring. The flower structure and bruised leaves smell sulfurous. I like it.
Lysichiton camtschatcensis is the Japanese skunk cabbage with attractive white hooded foot-tall spathes.
NAME:Symplocarpus and Lysichiton species (skunk cabbages)
TYPE OF PLANT: herbaceous perennial aroid
PART OF PLANT: late winter inflorescence
PRIMARY SCENT: skunky
SECONDARY SCENTS: sulfur
To some people, the lovely crocus is the earliest sign that spring is just around the corner. To me, the sign is the humble aroid skunk cabbage. It may be February, and there may be snow on the ground, but the hooded shrouds, or spathes, that protect the flowers of the single species of the Eastern skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) are poking out of the soil. Each spathe has a slightly different color combination—speckled maroon with streaks of mustard yellow, or the other way around.
Sometimes, when I’m walking in the low, moist areas across the river from my house, I’ll come upon some spathes and notice that, even though there is snow nearly everywhere, there isn’t any in a circle around the plant. Skunk cabbage flowers attract their pollinators—flies, beetles, and bees—not only with a funky odor but also with a bit of warmth. They offer an invitation to shelter. Through a process called thermogenesis, the temperature under the hood in winter can reach 70°F.
I’ve transplanted a few skunk cabbages on my property, which wasn’t easy. It’s easier to sow seeds. I don’t think many people grow these humble swamp things.
There are two other undeniably attractive skunk cabbage species from a different genus, Lysichiton. The skunk cabbage of the western United States (L. americanus) has rich yellow, ten-inch-tall spathes, and the Japanese species (L. camtschatcensis) bears pure white ones. The foliage that emerges after the flowers fade resembles long, narrow banana leaves.
The sixteen-inch-wide starfish flowers of Stapelia gigantea smell so much like carrion, flies may lay their eggs on them.
NAME:Stapelia and Heurnia species (starfish cactus)
TYPE OF PLANT: succulents
PART OF PLANT: summer flower
PRIMARY SCENT: carrion
SECONDARY SCENTS: cadaverine and putrescine, pungent, rank, sickening and very slightly sweet
There are plants that really do smell like animals, or, rather, dead ones, and they sometimes look the part. Stapelia flowers mimic rotting meat and are so convincing, flies lay their eggs on them hoping that the hatching maggots will have a food source; they won’t. S. gigantea produces a balloon-like bud, twisted at the tip, that splits along seam lines to open into a five-pointed starfish flower ten to sixteen inches across. It’s the easiest species to grow as a houseplant in a sunny window, but there are fifty-plus others.
Closely related to Stapelia, and with similar flowers, is Huernia, also with about fifty species. Why grow these plants? They make great practical jokes, amuse the children, and, most of all, in spite of the occasional unpleasantness are handsome succulents with striking flowers. And, in this case, the smell does not drift around. You have to get up close—something you most likely won’t do (more than once).
Zone 7 pineapple lily bulbs such as the floriferous Eucomis vandermerwei ‘Aloha Lily Leia’ have to be grown in pots in my zone 6 garden and brought inside for winter.
The South African Eucomis bulbs are called pineapple lilies for the dense colorful buds and starry flowers crowned by a tuft of small leaves that look like a pineapple. Around July, a stalk emerges from vivid strappy leaves that is eventually covered with flowers in red, white, purple, or green.
I grow one species with flowers that smell like coconut. But I notice bees, houseflies, and wasps on the flowers of other species. The animalic scent of E. bicolor, for instance, includes sulfur compounds attractive to pollinators in the families Calliphoridae (blowflies), Muscidae (including house flies), and Sarcophagidae (flesh flies).
E. comosa is supposed to smell good, but it and most of my Eucomis flowers just smell like hay during the day and into the August evening. I checked again at half past ten, and these flowers did smell sweet, floral, a gentle version of vanilla. Perhaps E. comosa is both day- and night-pollinated.
Eucomis are hardy in planting zone 7 of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), but I’m in the colder zone 6, and I have to grow them in pots that I bring in for the winter.* In September, I move the pots to a place under the porch where they will still get light but no rain, and let the planting medium become dry. After the foliage yellows, the pots go into a cool area in the cellar where the temperature hovers around 40°F, and I ignore them (for seven months). In spring, I bring them outside and water. I feed the plants when they are growing and repot them about every third spring. The bulbs produce offsets; some of the pots have more plants every year.
There are ten species and many varieties. Some are small, only eight inches tall, and one, which I’ve never seen, E. pallidiflora, grows to six feet.
*Know your planting zone. USDA zones are listed from Anchorage, Alaska (1) south to Miami, Florida (10). Zone 5, for instance, has minimum winter temperatures of –20°F to –10°F. Zone 6 represents –10°F to 0°F; Zone 7, likewise, 0°F to 10°F; and so on.
A collection of Eucomis flowers from the Carnival Mix shows a wide variety of hues. Most have a sulfurous odor, to attract flies. Others—for example, E. comosa—are sweetly scented.
BALSAMIC/RESINOUS
The prominence of the ancient city of Petra in southern Jordan, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was not owing to the value of something as ordinary as gold. Two thousand years ago, Petra was the center of a powerful trading empire, and the chief source of its fame and wealth was aromatic balsam, resinous substances such as frankincense and myrrh that flow from shrubs or trees, either spontaneously or from an incision. When dried, they resemble amber, and when touched by fire, they smolder like incense, releasing their fragrant scents.
“Balsamic” is one of the fragrance terms used in perfumery. It refers to scents that are smooth, dark, sweet, and sticky, derived from the secretions of flowering trees such as maple and sweet gum, shrubs, twigs, and flower pods. For the most part, these are not the type of resins that come from the needle-leaved evergreens in this chapter’s forest category.
One balsamic scent is bitter almond, from the seeds (they aren’t nuts) inside the stones of an apricot-like fruit. Unlike sweet almonds, these seeds cannot be eaten raw. They must be cooked to destroy their hydrocyanic acid, which can be lethal to humans. Once processed, the bitter seeds are used to make flavorings such as almond extract. Some far-flung flowers also have an almond scent—for example, cherry tree flowers, meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria), and white forsythia (Abeliophyllum-distichum).
Caramel is another balsamic scent. The autumn-falling leaves of the katsura tree, Cercidiphyllum japonicum, send a burned-sugar aroma into the air.
Storax is a thick liquid containing cinnamic acid harvested by tapping the familiar Asian or American sweet gum trees, Liquidambar orientalis and L. styraciflua. Sold commercially as an essential oil called “styrax,” storax has a floral, lilac, cinnamon, and leathery smell. American storax resin can be chewed like gum to freshen breath.
A different storax is the balsamic resin benzoin, made by drying the liquid obtained from the pierced bark of several species in the genus properly known as Styrax. The most common ornamental flowering species is Styrax japonicus, Japanese snowbell, with lovely white or pink bells that are followed by little, green, egg-like fruits. S. obassia is the fragrant snowbell with larger leaves and lemon-scented white flowers on pendulous racemes. S. americanus is the American snowbell, a rarely seen native shrub or small tree with scented flowers.
The herb fenugreek (Trigonella foenum-graecum), a pea-family plant, yields a seed or bean that is an important component in perfumery. It has a balsamic, spicy, caramel, and celery smell, and is also used as a flavoring ingredient to mimic maple.
The best-known balsamic fragrance comes from an orchid, Vanilla planifolia, which produces the bean from which the flavoring and the perfume ingredient are made. Today, with the price of vanilla rising, only 1 percent of commercial vanilla is natural. Some other plants have a delicious vanilla-like fragrance; they include Achlys triphylla, or vanilla leaf, a wildflower found from coastal California north to British Columbia (USDA planting zones 7 to 9). It can be used as a spreading ground cover in moist, shaded areas. The dried leaves smell like vanilla.
A climbing orchid, Vanilla planifolia is famed for the flavor and fragrance of its fruit—the vanilla bean.
The flowers of Filipendula ulmaria ‘Aurea’, a meadowsweet with golden foliage, smell like bitter almonds (almond extract).
The flowers of the so-called white forsythia, Abeliophyllum distichum, have a fragrance reminiscent of lilac, mixed with almond extract.
BALSAMIC/RESINOUS PLANTS
The golden rain tree, Koelreuteria paniculata, produces thousands of blossoms that fill the air with the scent of vanilla cake. Then the petals fall to cover the ground.
NAME:Koelreuteria paniculata (golden rain tree)
TYPE OF PLANT: tree
PART OF PLANT: mid- to late summer flowers
PRIMARY SCENT: vanilla cake
SECONDARY SCENTS: jasmine, leather, new car smell
Feathery leaves of Koelreuteria paniculata, the adaptable landscape and street tree, emerge pinkish bronze in spring before turning green. For several weeks in summer, the tree bears twelve-inch-long panicles covered with half-inch-wide lemon-colored, vanilla cake–scented pea flowers, which fall like “golden rain” to cover the ground. It is a sight to behold. Ultimately, they blow away.
Later, two-inch-long pink pods that look like paper lanterns develop. The drying fruits turn green, then brown, and, when shaken, rattle from the sound of the loose seeds inside. A cut panicle would be stunning in a dried arrangement.
Carolina jessamine, Gelsemium sempervirens, has yellow trumpet flowers that smell like vanilla and powder up close, and like cherry cough syrup from a distance.
Jasmine vines have fragrant flowers that are among the most wonderful. Their popularity has led to some flowering vines that are not in the Jasminum genus, or even in the same family, being called jasmine: for instance, Carolina jessamine (Gelsimium sempervivirens), Confederate jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides), and night-blooming jasmine (Cestrum nocturnum). What these plants have in common, besides their names, is that their flowers are fragrant and the first two are vines. Although real jasmine plants are not poisonous, those listed above are.
G. sempervirens is a native of the southeastern United States that grows from Virginia to Florida. It is covered in spring with yellow trumpet flowers. The species is not hardy in my area, but a new variety, ‘Margarita’, selected by Georgian Don Jacobs for its larger flowers, survives in planting zone 6.
The fast-growing vine, with stems that twist around any support, is the state flower of South Carolina, where it is called yellow jessamine. The plants are semi-evergreen in southern states and turn purplish-bronze through the winter.
Acacia shrubs and trees, known by the common names mimosa, wattle, and cassia, have many uses, depending on the species. Acacia farnesiana flowers are used for perfume. They have a cinnamon balsamic scent, with green, honey, floral/sweet, powder, and violet. This one, A. baileyana, smells a bit like a cake baking, new-mown grass, and a musky cut pumpkin.
NAME:Acacia (mimosa, wattle)
TYPE OF PLANT: tree, shrubby small tree
PART OF PLANT: winter to spring flowers
PRIMARY SCENT: vanilla cake
SECONDARY SCENTS: honey, almond, pumpkin flesh
Cut branches of the so-called mimosa can be found at the florist’s in winter, usually sold inside a plastic bag. The delicate, puffball Acacia flowers—a profusion of yellow stamens—shrink within hours if the room is too warm and dry. Their fresh aroma resembles just-baked vanilla cake, with honey and a touch of green grass; it’s sweet and full and vegetal. The fragrance, which appears in several fine perfumes, is rightfully revered.
Trees are grown in the South of France for the perfume industry. You might come across an Acacia in bloom in winter in a botanical garden’s cool greenhouse or orangerie, or outdoors in southwestern gardens. Or you might take up the challenge to grow a plant in a cool sunroom.
There are some 1,350 species of Acacia throughout the world, 1,000 of those in Australia, where they are collectively called wattle. A. dealbata seems to be the one most cultivated for the florist trade. The trees grow fast and may not live very long. A tall, rangy one in the Palm House at Wave Hill, in the Bronx, fell over and was replaced with A. baileyana var. purpurea, a native of New South Wales with purple new growth that turns silver. It is free-flowering but not as nicely scented. The flower smell is a little funky, like “pumpkin guts.” (Pumpkin is Cucurbita moschata. Moschata means “musk scent.”)
Northerners know another tree as mimosa. Like the acacia, it is in the pea family, but cold-hardy. Albizzia julibrissin has fluffy pink flowers that smell like peaches. But it is considered a weed tree for its tendency to self-sow, and is a nuisance because the feathery flowers fall and stick to cars’ hoods and roofs.
Dark pink Prunus mume ‘Kobai’ flowers smell like Red Hots. Double pink ‘Dawn’ has an almond and cherry scent. Intense white ‘Rosemary Clarke’ smells of pear brandy and acetone (nail-polish remover).
NAME:Prunus varieties (stone fruits such as flowering almond, apricot, cherry)
TYPE OF PLANT: trees
PART OF PLANT: late winter to spring flowers
PRIMARY SCENT: almond
SECONDARY SCENTS: cherry-vanilla, cinnamon, banana, rum cake, honey
Plants in the genus Prunus are known as “stone fruits” for their single seeds within hard outer shells (stones) encased in juicy pericarps. Examples include peach, cherry, plum, apricot, and almond. Besides trees and shrubs grown as edibles, many are grown as ornamentals for their flowers, and most are fragrant. These include the cherry trees surrounding the Tidal Basin in Washington, DC, and at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
I have a special affection for aromatic flowering apricots, P. mume varieties, and yet they are not very well known. Although hardy in planting zone 6, these trees, with single or double white, pink, or cherry-red blossoms, bloom early, and are sometimes ruined by frost. If you live in zones 7 and 8, however, these are the trees for you. One of the most powerfully fragrant is a single white cultivar, ‘Rosemary Clarke’, smelling mostly like pear brandy, with a background of baby powder and acetone (nail-polish remover). Dark pink ‘Peggy Clarke’ is more frost-hardy. ‘W. B. Clarke’ is a mid-pink weeping form. A paler double pink, ‘Dawn’, is strongly scented. One double dark pink is ‘Kobai’. These all smell a little bit different; Ellen discerned Red Hots candies in ‘Kobai’. ‘Nicholas’ smells like cinnamon with a faint banana peel when the flowers first open, and like rum cake as they age.
There are also fragrant plums, for example, P. umbellata ‘Pigeon’, ‘Chickasaw’, ‘Flatwoods’, and P. cerasifera ‘Atropurpurea’.
The Yoshino cherry tree, Prunus × yedoensis ‘Yoshino’, is the predominant Japanese variety planted in Washington, DC. The almond-scented, pale-pink flowers fade to white.
NAME:Cercidiphyllum japonicum (katsura)
TYPE OF PLANT: tree
PART OF PLANT: autumn leaves
PRIMARY SCENT: caramelized sugar
SECONDARY SCENTS: cotton candy
There is at least one autumn tree I cannot smell at all, and it is one that most others can. It’s the katsura (Cercidiphyllum japonicum). As katsura leaves turn yellow and drift to the ground, they are said to smell like burned sugar or caramel. I’ve walked through my garden with friends who stop and ask, “Where is that cotton candy smell coming from?” I couldn’t tell them.
The katsura is an understory tree. Although it will take full sun, it doesn’t mind some shade, in almost any soil. One of mine, called ‘Marioko Weeping’, came in the mail around twenty years ago as an eighteen-inch-long whip. It is now twenty-five feet tall. Another variety, ‘Pendulum’, is around nine feet tall and wide, with weeping branches that continue to grow longer through the season. The leaves are blue green. I also grow the handsome species that bears the yellow autumn leaves I cannot smell.
The katsura is an understory tree, beneath the treetop canopy. The caramel scent of Cercidiphyllum japonicum ‘Morioka Weeping’ in my fall garden fails to grab my attention.
Peonies: ‘Bowl of Beauty’ with pale lemony white center; lush double pink ‘Sarah Bernhardt’; and white ‘Festiva Maxima’ with crimson streaks.
FLORAL/SWEET
There are many blossoms with light fragrances that do not easily fit into more obvious categories. You might come across a species of daylily that has a light, flowery scent. I call that “floral.” And there are flowers that are neither spicy nor fruity nor piney. The word that inescapably comes to mind is “sweet.”
“Sweet” is light, pure—the smell of nectar. These flowers are sweet without the warm, grassy, outdoor smell of honey. Honey is a very common summer flower smell, but this is the lighter, “sugary” aroma. White sugar, of course, has no smell. But the scents of some plants seem to just be describable as sweet. My reaction to these flowers is predictable. It’s a smile.
I have collected some flowers that do not fit in other categories and placed them here, as a kind of catch all for “bouquet” blends. What do peonies smell like? Some do not smell at all. Others smell unpleasant. Many have a hard-to-describe perfume that is almost rose-like but with wintergreen.
Lily of the valley is not easy to analyze, other than saying “lily of the valley,” but it’s safe to say the fragrance is floral/sweet. Violets likewise have a special place among the treasured fragrant flowers. Theirs is a unique scent that could have its own category, but for now, I’m including them here.
FLORAL/SWEET PLANTS
Some of the newer coral-colored peonies have a bit of a fishy smell.
Very often, I’ll move a plant if it isn’t happy. It might prefer slightly different soil, moisture, or sun. I’ll give a plant three strikes before it’s out, but, honestly, two is usually enough to figure things out. But don’t move peonies if you can help it. They may live to be one hundred and take years to settle in, and, if transplanted, to settle in again.
There is an important rule to note when planting peonies, which arrive dormant and bareroot from mail-order nurseries in the fall. The growing points, or eyes above the roots, must be set at a specific depth—an inch below the surface in warm climates, two inches below in cold climates. Any deeper, and they may not bloom.
Not all peonies have nicely scented flowers. I bought a few new coral-colored varieties. Their flowers, like those of many other single, pollen-bearing kinds, smell fishy. Some of the more fragrant ones are double herbaceous heirlooms like pink ‘Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt’ (1932), ‘Sarah Bernhardt’ (1896), white ‘Duchesse de Nemours’ (1856), and ‘Festiva Maxima’ (1851)—white with tiny crimson wisps.
Tree peonies are related woody shrubs; their flowers smell either lemony (P. lutea) or yeasty musk (P. suffruticosa). The so-called intersectionals—hybrids of woody and herbaceous peonies—are sometimes scented. The yellow intersectional in my garden, ‘Sequestered Sunshine’, has a bit of the familiar cool wintergreen peony fragrance, but there is also something slightly acrid though not unpleasant. I would describe it as green mango.
Peonies (clockwise from top right): ‘Festiva Maxima’; ‘Monsieur Jules Elle’; ‘Karl Rosenfield’; ‘Duchesse de Nemours’.
The cowslip, Primula veris, smells of cold fresh air, sweet butter, honeysuckle, black tea, and a little freesia.
There are about five hundred Primula species, and more hybrids and cultivars. Although we might imagine skipping down the fragrant primrose path, most primroses do not smell. The best known for smell is the cowslip, P. veris, possibly named for the muddy habitat shared by pasture animals, or a version of an archaic name for cow dung.
This plant likes to grow in humus-rich organic soil in partial shade. The fragrance is floral and sweet. If I tried to get more specific, I would say the smell reminds me of cold, fresh air, linen drying on the line, sweet butter on the tip of your tongue, honeysuckle, and the scent of black tea, and that it is a little fruity (apricot) or freesia-like.
The oxlip, P. elatior, is similar to the cowslip. Clusters of lightly fragrant, soft-yellow trumpets nod to one side. P. florindae, the giant Himalayan cowslip, is an oversize version. The larger nodding flowers top stems that may reach three feet or more, above lettuce-like leaves. The early summer flowers are usually light yellow, but may be orange, copper, or deep red. The fragrance is fruity and spicy.
P. waltonii, Tibetan summer bells, likes the streamside or moist, humusy soil. In summer, up to thirty pendant, fruit-scented flaring bells, pale strawberry pink to dark wine-red in color, top several twenty-inch-tall stems. P. alpicola also enjoys a moist location. From May to June, and later, this “moonlight primula” produces white, yellow, mauve, raspberry-pink, or violet flaring bells on stalks up to twenty inches high. It hails from elevations of fifteen thousand feet in mountainous Tibet and needs a cool spot. The flowers have a honey-and-clove scent.
P. sikkimensis comes from the Himalayas, where it is found in wet meadows and along stream banks in full sun. The yellow flowers are floral/sweet.
Few among the familiar potted hybrids sold at supermarkets and big-box stores for indoor decoration from late winter to early spring, have more than a little scent. These are sometimes labeled P. polyanthus and P. acaulis hybrids. Look for plants with yellow flowers for the strongest scent. The double-flowered P. vulgaris in the trademarked Belarina series includes a fragrant yellow one called ‘Buttercup’.
Although treated as potted annuals, these hybrids can be planted outdoors in May, in a shady spot with moist humus-y soil where they could become short-lived perennials returning for a year or two.
The primrose path at Hay Honey Farm is a bit shady and damp.
The colorful wide variety of late spring to early summer allium.
Mark McDonough’s Allium ‘Millennium’ is a vivid new summer variety favored by pollinators and avoided by deer.
NAME:Allium species and varieties (ornamental onion)
TYPE OF PLANT: bulb
PART OF PLANT: by kind, spring, summer, fall flowers
PRIMARY SCENT: floral
SECONDARY SCENTS: grape, onion, sulfur
The name Allium probably comes from the Greek aleo, which means “to avoid.” That’s a reminder of the powerful smell and strong taste of garlic, onion, scallion, shallot, chives, and leeks—plants famous for the flavors (and smells) of their bulbs and leaves. But the flowers, which are often ornamental, smell softly floral/sweet just as long as they are not disturbed or, worse, crushed. Sweet freesia-like A. neapolitanum is sold in Europe as a cut flower.
Ornamental allium bulbs are planted in autumn for the flowers they produce from spring to summer. These are mostly large spherical umbels with starry, dark to light purple flowers; a few are white. Many of these flowers have a touch of a grape scent.
There are lesser-known species that are not planted from dormant bulbs but sold as potted herbaceous perennials, with flowers in colors from lilac-pink to rich purple. German garlic, A. senescens var. calcareum, is a mainstay of the herb garden. In mid- to late summer, it forms clumps of twisted, grayish-green, strappy foliage topped, at around fifteen inches, by more than two dozen dull pink to lilac, cup-shaped, fragrant hemispheric umbels. A. tanguticum ‘Summer Beauty’ (syn. A. senescens var. montanum) is closely related, with larger flowers that bloom later, from July into August. ‘Sugar Melt’ is another grassy, clump-forming summer perennial. Pink pom-poms appear above the six-inch-tall foliage. The flowers are sweetly scented as long as the foliage is not touched. The brightest one, A. ‘Millennium’, with long-lasting, vivid, rosy-lilac blossoms, is great for edging beds and borders.
Massachusetts architect Mark McDonough has grown thousands of allium plants and named hybrids in shades of rose, salmon, cinnamon, peach, and chartreuse. He says many are sweetly fragrant, smelling like carnations. Allium perdulce, a native of the American prairie, has hyacinth-scented blooms. A. darwasicum mimics gardenia.
Large-flowered spring allium aren’t known for their fragrance, but they are a little grapey.
Lily of the valley tends to spread and is best planted where it can be contained—here, by a rock wall and gravel driveway.
NAME:Convallaria majalis (lily of the valley)
TYPE OF PLANT: herbaceous perennial
PART OF PLANT: spring flowers
PRIMARY SCENT: lily of the valley
SECONDARY SCENTS: floral, cilantro, rose, jasmine, lily, a hint of lemon
The incredible, intense scent of lily of the valley is one of the most delicious of all. The aroma is difficult to analyze and convey: floral but with distant hints of cilantro, rubbing alcohol, and whispers of lemon and mint.
To my knowledge, the essential oil from flowers of lily of the valley, a European plant called muguet in French and in the perfume industry, has not been successfully extracted. Lily of the valley fragrances for candles, soap, and perfumes are formulated synthetically.
A few plants have scents somewhat like Convallaria. False Solomon’s seal (Maianthemum racemosum) and the grape hollies (Mahonia species) are said to bear a resemblance. Variegated kiwi vine, Actinidia kolomikta, is a relatively fast-growing, deciduous woody climber that typically reaches fifteen to twenty feet. It features clusters of fragrant greenish-white flowers in early summer, and attractive green foliage, variegated with white and, depending on the individual, gender, or the amount of direct sunlight, pink. Being a vine, it does have to be grown where it can be controlled.
Convillaria spreads, and that’s what you want a ground cover to do. But that’s worrying behavior; lily of the valley should never be planted near a wild or undeveloped woodland.
There are a few varieties. C. majalis ‘Flore Pleno’ has double white flowers; C. majalis var. rosea bears somewhat dirty mauve-pink flowers; C. majalis ‘Fernwood’s Golden Slippers’ has yellowish-chartreuse foliage; and the eye-catching C. majalis ‘Aureovariegata’ has green leaves with golden stripes. My first plant was pricey, but, characteristically, one became four in no time, then sixteen up on a retaining wall, a place from which it cannot escape and where I can see the foliage and smell the flowers up close.
It is conventional, in sensory gardens planned for the disabled, especially for the blind, to plant atop walls and in tall raised beds, to provide intimate experiences with fragrant flowers.
The flowers of Maianthemum racemosum, false Solomon’s seal, have a bit of a lily of the valley scent.
Striped lily of the valley, Convallaria majalis ‘Albostriata’, bears the familiar remarkable scent, as do the pink blossoms of var. rosea.
Night-blooming moonflower, Ipomea alba.
NAME:Ipomoea alba (moonflower)
TYPE OF PLANT: annual
PART OF PLANT: late summer flowers
PRIMARY SCENT: lily of the valley
SECONDARY SCENTS: light cilantro, black peppercorns, plastic Barbie dolls
If you are captivated by time-lapse photography, check out the moonflower, Ipomoea alba. In late summer to early fall, as darkness approaches, the flower’s pointed buds at the end of long tubes begin to unwind and, with the help a breeze, twitch, jerk, and yawn—and, in minutes, open their flat faces. I remember a fragrance from these luminous blossoms when I grew them decades ago in Brooklyn. But as many people say the scent is disappointing as say it is intoxicating. Perhaps there are environmental factors, like temperature, or issues of memory. I asked a dozen visitors to sample them one evening, and heard a range of responses: gardenia, baby powder, rose, vanilla, wintergreen, frangipani, and Coppertone. But the majority agreed the fragrance was like a lily of the valley.
I. alba is the night cousin of morning glories. Both are climbing vines from the tropical regions of the Americas.
I grow them from seed. Morning glories have hard black seeds around the size and shape of mouse droppings. The ivory moonflower’s tough seeds are faceted and broader. It is recommended that the seeds be scarified—carefully nicked with a knife. It’s safer to drag them across a sheet of sandpaper or soak them, beginning with warm water, until they swell, which usually means overnight.
As moonflowers take a long time to bloom, it is best to start the seeds inside. They resent being transplanted, so use a biodegradable container. The pot and seedling go into the ground together next to a trellis after all danger of frost has passed.
Catalpa bignonioides, Indian bean, grows tall but blooms when young, with fragrant panicles twelve inches tall.
NAME:Catalpa species (catalpa, cigar tree, Indian bean)
TYPE OF PLANT: tree
PART OF PLANT: late spring flowers
PRIMARY SCENT: honeysuckle
SECONDARY SCENTS: Arabian jasmine, honey
There are plenty of trees that we don’t recognize as having fragrant flowers. Catalpa bignonioides and C. speciosa are very large trees—fifty to ninety feet tall. But they bloom when they are quite small—at nose height—in as little as three years from seed. The flowers smell sweet, a bit like Arabian jasmine or honeysuckle. Both species are North American natives: C. bignonioides, called Indian bean, hails from the South, and C. speciosa, called cigar tree for its long brown fruits, from the North. A Chinese species is C. ovata. These deciduous trees have very large, heart-shaped leaves.
Catalpa is a great candidate to cut back or pollard for a colorful foliar accent. You can prune to a low point on the trunk every year, from which an endless supply of dormant buds will sprout leaves close to the ground. If cut back, it won’t bloom, of course. But you’ll get an abundance of lush leaves and in the case of the variety C. bignonioides ‘Aurea’, vivid chartreuse leaves.
Colorful late winter witch hazel, Hamamelis, hybrids.
NAME:Hamamelis species and hybrids (witch hazel)
TYPE OF PLANT: deciduous shrubs
PART OF PLANT: fall to late winter flowers
PRIMARY SCENT: floral
SECONDARY SCENTS: Juicy Fruit gum, black tea
A dark ceiling looms over the landscape as winter ends. Yesterday’s fresh white cover is melting into tattered patches of gray. But on one day each year, around early March, there’s an unexpected shift. My runny nose detects the perfume of hybrid witch hazels.
Only in winter could these little ribbons of color be considered eye-catching. But we might discover these flowers before we see them—by the fragrance that floats in the air, even in the lingering cold. It’s a present on nature’s birthday.
The witch hazels actually begin flowering in the fall, with Hamamelis virginiana, a huge shrub or small tree native from Texas north through all of Quebec. H. vernalis is just a touch smaller, and, as the name suggests, blooms in spring, but some years the short yellow or orange ribbons appear in January. Their scent is often like baking bread. I grow a very dwarf variety that is modest in stature but not in scent. Totally sweet, H. vernalis ‘Quasimodo’ is covered in autumn with reddish buds that open in late winter with a powerful smell of Juicy Fruit gum.
H. mollis is the Chinese witch hazel, with a floral/sweet, honey scent and hints of green, earth, and tobacco. The witch hazels most often seen are hybrid crosses with the Chinese species and listed as H. × intermedia. The colorful flowers of some varieties are very bright. Among the better known are dark yellow ‘Arnold Promise’ and red ‘Jelena’.
I can smell the heliotrope, face powder, black-tea, and floral/sweet perfume of the pale yellow flowers of ‘Westerstede’ from twenty feet or more downwind in the late winter air. I cut a little stem from ‘Rochester’, and its handsome red ribbons filled the room with their delightful floral and fruity bouquet.
About half the species of winter hazel, Corylopsis, are fragrant.
NAME:Corylopsis species (winter hazel)
TYPE OF PLANT: deciduous shrubs
PART OF PLANT: late winter to early spring flowers
PRIMARY SCENT: floral
SECONDARY SCENTS: sweet butter
Corylopsis, the winter hazel, blooms on the tails of the early witch hazels. The various medium to large species and varieties have dangling pale yellow flowers on naked branches. Some have reliable perfume in March; others are not quite as scented. The smell is floral/sweet, much like the cowslip.
C. pauciflora is called the buttercup winter hazel, perhaps for the color of the flowers. C. glabrescens is the fragrant winter hazel. C. willmottiae has a stronger floral/sweet scent.
I had a selection of C. sinensis that, despite being cold-hardy, would bloom too early in my zone 6 valley and get ruined by a late freeze. I donated it to a public garden southeast of mine.
The rarely grown shrub honeysuckle, Lonicera fragrantissima (winter honeysuckle), brings floral/sweet scent to the late winter garden.
The word “honeysuckle” conjures many memories, chief among them an enthralling smell of summer. I remember, as we all do, picking a flower and pulling the stamen through from the back to get a drop of sweet nectar. The flowers of Lonicera japonica opened white and turned golden yellow after a couple of days, so there were always at least two colors on the vine.
I’m sorry to say that no one should ever grow the species form, and especially the selection ‘Halliana’. Hall’s honeysuckle is a terrible invader that has choked woodlands all over the United States and been banned in a few states, despite having the best, sweetest smells of all. Hall’s honeysuckle is included here as a reference for many other plant smells. Thankfully, no other honeysuckle vine is as treacherous and destructive.
A milder-mannered, variegated version, L. japonica ‘Aureoreticulata’, has gold netting on green leaves. It looks a little sickly, but is certainly interesting. I had it in the shady Brooklyn garden for years, and it barely climbed above three feet. This wimp occasionally bore the same fragrant flowers of memory.
Alternatives range from barely to mildly scented. L. periclymenum, Dutch honeysuckle, offers several varieties with flowers in two or three colors—for example, dark pink on the outside, yellow and cream on the inside. I can get a bit of smell if I stick my nose in the flowers of L. periclymenum ‘Belgica’ or ‘Serotina’, and maybe a touch more in the evening. Catalogs that sell these vines tend to boast about the incredibly rich scent. I’ve read that a new one, ‘Scensation’, is fruity. The name and descriptions seem exaggerated. I’m still growing the plant, and in time I hope to be proved wrong.
Lonicera × heckrottii ‘Gold Flame’ is a lovely climber with rose-pink buds that open to reveal yellow and cream on the inside. I grew ‘Gold Flame’ on the back of the house in Brooklyn for twenty years. The new growth and flower buds were often covered with aphids, and occasionally with mildew, way up high. But those issues didn’t impede the flowering or cause permanent damage, and it’s worth putting up with problems for the long-lasting floral display—but little scent that I could detect. Michael Dirr in his seminal book, Manual of Woody Landscape Plants, says the plant is “slightly fragrant.” Perhaps the flowers on my vine were too high up for me to smell. I recently came across a plant in a pot at the Morris County Farms nursery, and, to my surprise, up close there was an aroma of vanilla and powder.
As for attractive and novel, L. reticulata ‘Kintzley’s Ghost’ has pale blue-green perfoliate leaves (the stem pierces or perforates the leaves) that look like those of a silver-dollar eucalyptus, and lightly fragrant flowers. L. flava, the yellow honeysuckle, is a twining native of the southern United States that also has perfoliate leaves. The flowers are golden yellow and mildly fragrant.
Then there’s the little-used shrub, L. fragrantissima, which begins to bloom on the first day of spring. It’s hardy in planting zones 4 to 8. Winter honeysuckle’s flowers smell like those of the Japanese invader, with a bit of lemon. There are some invasive Lonicera shrubs—for example, L. maackii—but this isn’t one of them.
L. thibetica is a rarely seen low-spreading deciduous shrub with small sea-green leaves and fragrant lilac-pink flowers in May and June. The flowers have a mutable scent, from lilac to lily.
Pink and gold L. × heckrottii ‘Gold Flame’; white and yellow L. periclymenum ‘Peaches and Cream’.
L. fragrantissima flowers look as if they were carved from wax and smell like Japanese honeysuckle, with a touch of lemon.
L. japonica ‘Halliana’, Hall’s honeysuckle, has the best scent but is too invasive to plant.
The summer flowers of Heptacodium miconioides (seven-son flower) smell floral/sweet, with honey.
NAME:Heptacodium miconioides (seven-son flower)
TYPE OF PLANT: shrub or small tree
PART OF PLANT: summer flowers
PRIMARY SCENT: floral
SECONDARY SCENTS: honey
Heptacodium miconioides, related to honeysuckle, is the only species in its genus; when that occurs, a plant is said to be monotypic. When I bought my plant, it was newly introduced and very rare. That’s changed. “Seven-son flower” has no enemies or cultural issues if it is grown in full sun in planting zones 5 to 9. It will grow in some shade but may lean toward the light. You can let it go as a multistemmed, large (to twenty feet), fairly fast-growing vase-shaped shrub, or maintain it as a single-stemmed tree. The tree form is better, because the bark that exfoliates into conspicuous long, shaggy beige strips will be visible on the trunk.
The late summer flowers are small, creamy white stars. Their fragrance is floral/sweet and a little honey-like. These blossoms appear in whorls within branched panicles, with each whorl containing six flowers around a central bud. But the next appealing feature comes after the petal fall: The expanding flower calyxes are bright brick red, and last well into late autumn.
The sepal-like calyxes behind the flowers turn coral-red after the petals fall and persist through autumn. In winter, the small tree’s shaggy exfoliating beige bark is the attraction.
The flowers of the popular mock orange, Philadelphus ‘Belle Etoile’, smell like honey, citrus, and rose—very like orange blossoms.
NAME:Philadelphus species, varieties and hybrids (mock orange)
TYPE OF PLANT: deciduous shrubs
PART OF PLANT: spring to summer flowers
PRIMARY SCENT: floral/sweet
SECONDARY SCENTS: by variety, honeysuckle, jasmine, honey, orange blossom and fruit, gardenia
Every neighbor in my hometown had one or two big, twiggy mock orange shrubs. The common name comes from the flowers’ presumed resemblance to orange blossoms. The desire after World War II for tidy foundation plantings took a toll on mock oranges, and they are much less commonly found today than when I was a child. But, for those who love fragrance, they are necessary (and carefree).
Mock orange shrubs are holarctic—they come from all parts of the world north of the tropical regions. The mock orange native to my area is a bit of a letdown. It is indestructible, but its Latin name tells the story: Philadelphus inodorus—the epithet inodorus means the flowers have no scent.
Some of the most popular shrubs are versions of the European P. coronarius, which, to me, has a warm honey scent with a little orange and maybe light gardenia—often described as jasmine and orange fruit. I grew a selection of this species, P. coronarius ‘Aureus’, with vivid chartreuse foliage.
The little-leaf mock orange, P. microphyllus, marginally hardy depending on provenance, grows in dry, shaded locations from California east to Texas and, according to the USDA, north to Wyoming. Its small flowers smell fruity, like pineapple, orange, and ripe mango. You might be able to find this shrub, but you are more likely to find a hybrid version. Victor Lemoine, famous for breeding lilacs and, in 1866, introducing the peegee hydrangea, crossed P. microphyllus with the sturdy P. coronarius and came up with P. × lemoinei. One well-known variety is the superscented ‘Belle Etoile’. The flowers are white with a berry stain at the center and yellow filaments.
Lemoine also crossed a P. coronarius hybrid with P. pubescens and named the result, P. × virginalis. A selection of this hybrid is the semidouble pure white ‘Virginal’, with a high floral/sweet honeysuckle or Arabian jasmine scent and a faint background of lime. The buds look like little balls; they spread open to reveal a bunch of feathery petals. Similar semidouble varieties are ‘Minnesota Snowflake’ and the compact ‘Dwarf Minnesota Snowflake’.
Double-flowered P. × virginalis ‘Virginal’ has an intoxicating high floral/sweet scent reminiscent of honeysuckle and Arabian jasmine.
There is an incredible range of daylilies, with some eighty-nine thousand registered varieties.
NAME:Hemerocallis species and hybrids (daylily)
TYPE OF PLANT: herbaceous perennial
PART OF PLANT: by variety, spring to fall flowers
PRIMARY SCENT: floral
SECONDARY SCENTS: lemon, tea, fruit, gardenia
Hemerocallis, in Greek, means “beautiful for a day.” Some plants in the genus, like the orange roadside species, H. fulva, are beautiful but odorless. Daylilies are easy to cross breed. Descendants of fewer than thirty species, mostly from China, Japan, and Korea, as well as hybrids, have led to a lot of varieties. As of May 2018, there were almost eighty-nine thousand cultivars registered with the American Hemerocallis Society, with about one thousand new ones coming every year. Not all the hybrids and cultivars that fill plant catalogs are fragrant. When they are, the smell is floral/sweet, sometimes with a bit of warm black tea, occasionally with a touch of fruit and light lemon. I expected a fancy new hybrid like the double yellow one with twisted central petals not to smell, but it does. Not all hybrids are elaborate. The tried-andtrue favorite ‘Hyperion’ from 1924 has large single yellow flowers that are sweetly scented.
The best-known early-blooming species is called the lemon lily, H. lilioasphodelus (formerly H. flava), with yellow flowers that may have a bit of maroon color on the buds and petals (sepals) when they open. The fragrance is floral/sweet. Similar in appearance is H. dumortieri, which begins to bloom in spring and continues till fall. It is vigorous and a profuse bloomer, with heavily scented flowers.
H. middendorfii has an abundance of slightly fragrant flowers. H. coreana, the Korean daylily, has yellow-orange, lightly fragrant flowers on stems held above two-foot-tall leaves. There may be fifty to eighty flowers per scape. H. hakuensis begins flowering in early July, with up to thirty-five buds per scape, and continues to produce orange-yellow trumpet-shaped flowers into August.
H. citrina has flaring lemon-scented yellow flowers in June and July. These narrow trumpets open at night and stay open much of the following day. Like many night-blooming flowers, it has a potent smell to attract pollinators in the dark. H. altissima is tall and vigorous with nocturnally fragrant yellow flowers, much like H. citrina. H. thunbergii (syn. H. citrina thunbergii) blooms into September.
Tall Hemerocallis ‘Autumn Minaret’ adds to the late-season garden.
Nearly every Hosta hybrid that has H. plantaginea in its heritage will be fragrant. Blossoms of the species open in the late afternoon and release their honeysuckle scent through the evening.
NAME:Hosta species and hybrids (hosta, funkia, August lily, plantain lily)
TYPE OF PLANT: herbaceous perennial
PART OF PLANT: late summer flowers
PRIMARY SCENT: floral
SECONDARY SCENTS: honeysuckle, Arabian jasmine, tea
There are nearly as many Hosta varieties as there are daylilies, but you can practically count on your fingers and toes the ones with fragrant flowers. They all have something in common: H. plantaginea “blood” in their parentage—this is the main species, with floral/sweet fragrant flowers, similar in scent to Japanese honeysuckle. Hosta flowers usually open in the morning, but H. plantaginea opens late in the afternoon, preparing to attract night pollinators with long proboscises.
Unlike nearly all hostas, which produce a flush of new growth only in the spring, this one continues to make new leaves through the season. The species name comes from “plantain” (one old common name for the hosta was plantain lily, perhaps because the green seed-bearing fruits are long and thin and banana-like). While most hostas hail from Japan and Korea, H. plantaginea comes from warm southern China, and it is an old favorite in southern gardens in the United States because of its heat tolerance. Northeasterners may take hostas like this old one for granted, but West Coast gardeners, plagued by European snails, ache for them.
We’re lucky now that there are scented varieties with plantaginea parentage. The first one was ‘Honey Bells’, with purple flowers—it is a cross between plantaginea and the famous H. sieboldii, which has bluish leaves and purple flowers. Early variegated fragrant hostas were ‘Iron Gate Glamour’ and ‘Iron Gate Delight’. H. ‘Fragrant Bouquet’ combines variegation (chartreuse with a wide cream-colored margin) and broad leaves.
‘Stained Glass’ is the first fragrant hosta to bloom in my garden. It has striking green leaves with wide yellow centers, and white flowers that have a slight hint of violet on the buds. A sport of that one is named, appropriately, ‘Cathedral Windows’. One of the most popular is H. ‘Guacamole’, with light green leaves and darker green margins. H. ‘Ambrosia’ is a sport with blue-green leaves that appear to have had milky wax dripped on them.
Hosta ‘Holy Mole’ is a sport (a mutated part of a plant that shows different characteristics) of popular H. ‘Guacamole’, which itself was a sport of ‘Fragrant Bouquet’.
Hosta ‘Seventh Heaven’, ‘Night Life’, ‘Stained Glass’; foreground left to right: ‘Streaker Heaven’, ‘Fragrant Blue’, ‘Guacamole’.
Double white Parma violet ‘Comte de Brazza’; dark ‘Governor Herrick’; rose pink ‘Rosina’; double violet ‘Duchesse de Parme’. The fragrance of violets is hard to describe. There’s a bit of anise in it, and the smell of lipstick.
NAME:Viola odorata and varieties (violets, violas)
I’ve read descriptions in old books about how a gardener might cover a hillside with varieties of the most sweetly scented violets. I’ve never witnessed that. One reason is that fragrant violets have pretty much disappeared.
Violets tend to be promiscuous. Maybe Viola odorata hybridized with plants like V. sororia, the scentless broadleaf lawn weed, and bred itself into oblivion. Or maybe V. sororia simply took over areas where V. odorata used to grow. But the loss of garden violets is nothing compared to their disappearance as cut flowers.
The heirloom Parma types were known in Italy as early as the 1600s. At one time, there were some 150 greenhouses growing fragrant violets in and around Rheinbeck, New York to ship to flower markets. The last one closed its vents a couple of decades ago. Violets went out of fashion. Perhaps the advent of the automobile hastened the end of nosegays, hand-held bouquets that were once needed to mask the smell of horse manure on city streets. When, in the 1910s, Victorian clothes gave way to skimpier, more comfortable frocks, generous corsages just didn’t fit.
I am growing two heirloom varieties, purchased from Select Seeds, through the winter under lights in a cool spot indoors. I’ve set their pots on pebbles in a large tray with water below but not touching the containers. It is difficult to analyze the smell even when you do encounter these flowers. Violets have a soporific effect on the olfactory nerves, owing to the chemical ionone, which causes numbness. You can smell them only for a couple of minutes and then must take a break before you can smell them again. My attempt to describe the floral/sweet scent is that it is a blend of penny candy, new-mown hay, anise, peppermint, camphor, grape jelly, honey, baby powder, and lipstick.
Other lightly scented Viola species include the native V. blanda, sweet white violet. V. canadensis, the Canada violet, smells faintly of lemon. You may be able to find V. odorata ‘Queen Charlotte’ (sometimes called English violet), which grows outdoors in planting zones 4 to 10 and blooms in spring and fall with scented blossoms. There are also some fragrant violas that resemble small pansies. The flowers of one I have grown, ‘Purple Showers’, smell like Dentyne gum.
Viola ‘Purple Showers’ is one of the long-blooming, pansy-like garden flowers. It smells like Dentyne gum.
At one time, the smell of mignonette was well known. These days, few of us have ever sampled one of Thomas Jefferson’s favorite flowers.
Reseda odorata, known by the name “mignonette,” was once a popular garden plant grown for fragrance. The French word mignonette means “little sweet one,” or “little darling.” The plant is an annual from North Africa and is still grown in the South of France for its oil, extracted by means of chemical solvents, maceration, or enfleurage. The flowers in the garden smell most in full sunlight.
There is some question as to what that scent is. Ellen thought it was astringent, citrus, and juniper with honey. Research unveils descriptions such as cherry blossom. I’ve also read “green and fruity.” Chemical analysis reveals a high concentration of theaspirones, one of the chief molecular components of black tea. But, most of all, the scent is of ripe raspberries and violet.
R. odorata looks like a weed, but it was a favorite of Thomas Jefferson, who grew it at Monticello and the Victorians went wild for it, despite its humble appearance. Robert M. McCurdy wrote in his 1927 book, Garden Flowers, “Sweet Mignonette is undoubtedly the most popular flower cultivated solely for fragrance.” He continued, “Shorn of fragrance the Mignonette would indeed be a very minor plant.”
Clematis terniflora has a rich aroma like honey, vanilla, candy, and Lysol. But it is an invasive, smothering vine that spreads by seed, and should be avoided.
NAME:Clematis species (clematis)
TYPE OF PLANT: vine
PART OF PLANT: flowers spring to fall
PRIMARY SCENT: various floral/sweet
SECONDARY SCENTS: vanilla, lavender, honey, orange blossom and others by variety
Not all clematis have scented flowers, but a few are well known, even famous, for their scents. Clematis montana varieties in the small-flowered group are early spring bloomers that cover themselves with single or double, white or pink, flowers. The smell is like vanilla ice cream.
C. armandii, with its shiny lance-shaped evergreen leaves, is for warmer climates. The late winter fragrant flowers are followed, as in many clematis, by decorative fluffy seedheads.
I keep Clematis ‘Betty Corning’ on a metal trellis by a path in my garden. The flowers are nodding bells with pointy, re-curved petals that are lavender in color and fragrance. Unlike many clematis, this hybrid of C. crispa × C. viticella seems not to make seeds, so it directs its energy to making flowers longer—for up to six weeks. The buoyant fragrance floats on the stratified air, and it is one that is splendid for me but not sensed by everyone. I ask guests to smell it, and three out of four can.
More fragrant species include C. flammula; C. rehderiana, with creamy yellow bells scented like orange blossoms; and some of the herbaceous types such as C. recta and C. heracleifolia. These have flowers with a smell that could be described as honey.
In late summer, C. terniflora (formerly C. paniculata) is covered with fragrant blooms, but this plant is a thug, especially if it gets an opportunity to climb over a tree and smother it. Grown on a fence, and watched carefully, it can be controlled. The flowers have a smell that is at times honey but also vanilla, children’s dress-up perfume, and Lysol.
Clockwise from center top: Coniferous scents from Cryptomeria japonica; bristly Pinus strobus; dangling Juniperus rigida ‘Pendula’; Thujopsis dolabrata; Chamaecyparis thyoides; sprigs of rosemary; dried roots of vetiver; Abies Koreana ‘Horstmann’s Silberlocke’; Juniperus virginiana to the left of Picea glauca; and Chamaecyparis pisifera.
FOREST
The smell of the forest is what you imagine, from the fluffy forest duff of its floor up to the canopy of tall evergreens. The deciduous trees and shrubs with fragrant sap are in the balsamic/resinous section of this book, but the needled conifers, with their piney, green, resinous smells, are here, in the forest category. When the needles or flat scales of arborvitae, cedars, firs, or even evergreen rosemary are crushed, they all release their enduring aromas.
The well-known Christmas tree, the balsam fir (Abies balsamea), shares its name with the balsamic fragrances. But it, too, is an evergreen of the forest, with a light and sweet smell that could be described as a mix of lily of the valley, bayberry, and spice. A. koreana, the Korean fir, has a spicy, green smell that is a little bit turpentine and a little bit Ajax scouring powder. When snapped in half, the needles of its cousin A. concolor, the concolor fir, smell exactly like orange rind. I’ve read that the crushed or cut foliage of the American arborvitae smells like tansy, but the fragrance of Thuja occidentalis ‘Emerald’ (‘Smaragd’) in my garden fills the air outdoors with a delicious orange scent.
Have you ever been in the woods after a rain? People say they can smell the rain, and some may guess that is just wishful thinking. But there is an explanation, it’s petrichor (petra for stone and ichor for the blood of the gods), a term coined in the 1960s. When rain comes, plant oils that have accumulated on rocks and soil mix with geosmin, a chemical made by soil-dwelling bacteria, and are released into the air, where they meet ozone created by lightning in the atmosphere, producing that distinctive and pleasant aroma.
On the forest floor, and below, invisible fungal mycelia are building a network of threads that connect every living plant in the woodland. Trees need fungi to decompose organic matter and turn it into the nutrients on which plants depend. When the moisture and temperature are right, fungi produce their fruiting bodies—mushrooms—bearing millions of spores.
We’ve all smelled edible mushrooms, such as the small white creminis (Agaricus bisporus) and, when they mature, large brown portobellos. Crush a cap between your fingers. How would you describe that odor? Is it musty, dusty, funky, earthy, yeasty, peppery, or faintly like ammonia?
Mycologists can sometimes identify species from a distance by their scents—smells that can be categorized as pleasant or malodorous, starchy, smoky, tar-like, or “phenolic” like plastic. Some conjure maple syrup, garlic, or the white paste we knew in kindergarten. World-famous chanterelles smell like ripe apricots. On the other hand, Phallus odoratus, the stink horn, has a powerful, putrid carrion and excrement odor.
Also sharing the forest are mosses, which smell mostly like earth, and sometimes like rain. There are also composite organisms, symbiotic associations of fungi and algae we know as lichens. They can be flat or feathery. They grow on tree trunks, rocks, fence posts—almost anything when conditions are right—and an undisturbed colony can survive for centuries. They’re not parasitic and cause no harm to their substrate.
One lichen, with the common name oakmoss, is mostly from Europe but also found in North America, and looks a bit like deers’ antlers. It is silver when dry and green when moistened. It’s used both as a fixative in perfumes and also for its fragrance, which, once processed, is bright, woodsy, smoky, earthy—a bit like creosote, patchouli, oak lumber, violet leaf, and the seashore.
The fruiting part of the thread-like fungus of the forest floor is familiar to us as a mushroom, like this earthy, fragrant blue oyster (Pleurotus ostreatus var. columbinus).
Lichens, for instance this one with fine, feathery growth, are formed in a partnership, a symbiosis of fungus and photosynthesizing algae or bacteria. Perfumers’ oakmoss is an antler type.
The needles of the Korean fir, Abies koreana ‘Horstmann’s Silberlocke’, curl to expose their glaucous undersides. The fragrance is spicy, green, and acrid, and suggests turpentine.
One towering tree in the forest, and on my property, is the eastern white pine (Pinus strobus). The fragrant resin that oozes from branches, trunks, or wounds hardens over time. After millions of years, it becomes fossilized amber.
FOREST PLANTS
NAME:Pinus species (pine)
TYPE OF PLANT: evergreen conifer
PART OF PLANT: needles, resin—a sticky, oozing, gum-like organic substance
PRIMARY SCENT: coniferous, pine
SECONDARY SCENTS: spicy sweet, turpentine
Have you ever picked up a twig that’s fallen from a pine tree and gotten sticky tar, or pitch, on your hands? You can try to wash it off with soap and water, but you’ll need a solvent like turpentine to remove it. That goo is fresh resin.
Deciduous trees have sap—just think of the watery liquid that is boiled and reduced to make maple syrup. Conifers have viscous resins that like pine tar, weep or “sweat” from branches, twigs, and trunks. The purpose of resin is not certain. It may reduce moisture loss or seal off or flush a wound. Resins are antiseptic and may prevent decay. The fluid hardens over time, and, after a very long time, becomes fossilized as amber. Small creatures like insects have been trapped and preserved in amber.
Pine trees’ needles and tar have a distinctive fragrance. The fragrance is typically coniferous or piney, turpentine-like, herbal/green, fresh, invigorating, spicy, and sweet, and varies in aroma and potency across different species.
Altogether, there are more than one hundred species of pine and scores of cultivars. Most grow tall and are best as specimens where there is space. Unlike some evergreen conifers, they cannot be trimmed to reduce their height. If you cut into wood that does not have green growth, the branch will not divide and thicken with new needles—it will die. The only way to prune pines to make the growth thicker is to snap the “candles”—the new growth—in half in spring, when they are around two inches long.
Eastern white pine, Pinus strobus, can grow one hundred feet tall in the wild, but a mutation of the zone 3–hardy species, P. strobus ‘Sea Urchin’, reaches a whopping three feet. This pine’s candles grow into bluish-green needles in bundles of five, like soft brushes, up to five inches long.
The spires of the evergreen herb rosemary (background) are generally cold-hardy to zone 8 or 7 only with protection, but there are some new varieties that are hardier.
NAME:Rosmarinus species and varieties (rosemary)
TYPE OF PLANT: herbal sub-shrub
PART OF PLANT: leaves (needles)
PRIMARY SCENT: pine
SECONDARY SCENTS: green, resinous, camphorous, nutmeg, a scant suggestion of lemon rind
One of the most powerful fragrances in an herb garden comes from a beautiful sub-shrub or creeper. In California, it’s an ornamental landscape plant loved for its blue flowers, though most gardeners grow it for the needle leaves. It is the herb rosemary. When the leaves are touched or brushed by a pants leg, a powerful smell is released: clean, stimulating, herbal/green, pine, balsam fir, and, if you use your imagination, with a distant scent of nutmeg and lemon rind. Once you touch the plant, don’t expect the fresh smell to go away. It lingers outside and permeates the air indoors when short stems are cut and brought into the kitchen.
Unfortunately, most varieties are not hardy north of planting zone 7. Take heart, there are a couple of new ones to try. For instance, Rosmarinus officinalis ‘Alcade’ is claimed to survive in zone 5; ‘Madeline Hill’, ‘Athens Blue Spires’, and one of the first hardy introductions, ‘Arp’, are said to be hardy in zone 6.
Rosemary demands excellent drainage. The plant cannot have wet feet, but, in a pot, if it dries, it dies. To grow it outdoors in cold climates, cut the plant, after the first hard frost, to within two or three inches from the ground. Cover the remaining plant completely with four to six inches of very light mulch, such as curled oak leaves, which won’t tamp down. (Lift the mulch in spring, to check for the first sign of new growth, and if evident, uncover it.)
If you have a potted rosemary plant you would like to carry through the winter, you need a spot with very bright light and a bit of sun but where the temperature never climbs above 65°F. It takes careful watering and a potting medium with plenty of drainage material to keep it alive. Sink the pot in the garden soil outside for the summer.
Another possibility is to take cuttings, root them, and start again. Young plants may have a better chance of making it indoors until next spring.
There are many species and varieties of juniper or cedar. Juniperus rigida ‘Pendula’ is a tall weeping cultivar. Most have an aroma that is much like that of a pencil being sharpened.
NAME:Juniperus species (juniper, cedar)
TYPE OF PLANT: evergreen conifer
PART OF PLANT: wood, scale-like leaves
PRIMARY SCENT: cedar
SECONDARY SCENTS: gin, wood, musk, spice
Every part of the juniper is fragrant, and the cut wood has the strongest aroma. Remember when you sharpened a yellow pencil at school? Well, those pencils used to be made from eastern red cedar, Juniperus virginiana, but they are now most often California incense cedar, Calocedrus decurrens. (“Cedar,” by the way, is the common name for any number of similar conifers.)
Eastern red cedar is naturally insect- and rot-resistant, which is why the lumber is used for cedar chests, outdoor furniture and even building siding. J. occidentalis, the western juniper, also yields long-lasting wood.
Some junipers have edible cones used as flavorings. When I smell juniper berries, which are actually female cones that start out green and turn dark blue, I smell gin. It’s obvious, because the spirit is flavored with the cones from a circumpolar species called common juniper, J. communis. The Dutch word for “juniper,” jenever (or genever), is also the name given to the national liquor of the Netherlands—one of the oldest spirits—which is “gin” to us.
There are hundreds of cultivars, including very short ground covers, such as Japanese garden juniper (J. procumbens ‘Nana’), creeping juniper (J. horizontalis), and the popular blue rug juniper (J. horizontalis ‘Wiltonii’). One specimen I grow, however, is a tall, weeping one, J. rigida ‘Pendula’.
There are columnar varieties that, in cold climates, could be stand-ins for Italian cypress (though, sadly, they are shorter). Slender J. scopulorum ‘Skyrocket’ has a bluish cast. Other narrow varieties are J. virginiana ‘Emerald Sentinel’ and J. virginiana ‘Taylor’.
Fragrant juniper berries can be found on most varieties. The edible ones that are dried and used as a spice for flavoring come only from Juniperus communis, or common juniper. They smell a lot like the preparation in which they are essential—gin.
Vetiver fragrance comes from the dried roots of a frost tender grass.
NAME:Cymbopogon zizanioides (vetiver)
TYPE OF PLANT: grass
PART OF PLANT: roots
PRIMARY SCENT: cedar
SECONDARY SCENTS: slight citrus, tarragon, pine, oak
Vetiver, Cymbopogon zizanioides, is a tender perennial grass in the Poaceae family and a very close relative of lemon grass, C. citratus. Vetiver has slender, grass-green blades; lemon grass has shorter blue-green glaucous leaves. In a zone 9 or 10 climate, where vetiver can grow year-round, it can reach nine feet, and, in the best conditions, the roots can dive down seven feet. These aromatic roots smell like wood, moist soil, a grassy meadow, and cedar. Not all vetiver sources provide roots that smell exactly the same, and people perceive the smell differently. Some detect the seaside and others a smokiness or leather, labeling it balsamic. Nonetheless, it is a very popular ingredient in men’s cologne and in some fine fragrances for women. I just like to have it in a bowl to catch its fresh scent when I pass by.
I plant chunks, divisions of vetiver and lemon grass, in the late spring, and, in my short season ending with the first frost, the plants have reached about four feet tall. If I pick and tear a blade of lemon grass, I get a sharp, citrus smell much like Melissa officinalis, lemon balm. Vetiver blades have no smell. The point of growing vetiver is to harvest it, like potatoes and carrots. Dig up the plant in the fall, cut off the foliage, wash the roots completely clean of soil, and let them dry. The smell is evident when the roots are dry, but, for a temporary boost, pass them under cold running water, which revitalizes the scent; then let them dry again. If kept completely dry and in a closed container, vetiver should last forever.
There are few grasses that have a fragrance. Prairie dropseed, Sporobolus heterolepis, a native perennial grass that grows from Saskatchewan south to Texas and east to Connecticut, does. The fine green fifteen-inch-long blades turn light brown in the fall, when pink and brown flowers fill the air with the strong scent of what I think of as popcorn. Others say coriander or cilantro.
A few grass plants have a scent, mostly when they are freshly cut or dried. Prairie dropseed, Sporobolus heterolepis, however, has fragrant flowers that smell like popcorn, even from a distance.
The waxy coating of Myrica berries is wonderfully fragrant.
NAME:Myrica pensylvanica (bayberry)
TYPE OF PLANT: deciduous shrub
PART OF PLANT: berries, leaves
PRIMARY SCENT: balsam fir
SECONDARY SCENTS: lavender, warm, hay, cinnamon, pine
Bayberry is a member of the myrtle family, Myricaceae, along with bay laurel. This deciduous shrub, Myrica pensylvanica, is also called wax myrtle.
Bayberry shrubs can reach heights of six feet or more. They grow along the East Coast from South Carolina north to Nova Scotia, and as far west as Lake Michigan, in a variety of conditions, from marshy places to sandy shores. The silvery gray berries are coated in a very fragrant wax whose subtle coniferous smell is like balsam fir, with hints of nutmeg and ginger. The salt-tolerant twiggy shrubs with lustrous shiny dark green leaves make excellent cover for birds, who will eventually eat the berries.
The story goes that the berries were gathered en masse by the colonists in America and used to make a blue dye. Or they were boiled in water, then cooled, and the wax on the surface was skimmed off to make candles. Four pounds of berries produced approximately one pound of wax. The wax contains stearic, palmitic, myristic, and oleaic acids, and is said to burn cleaner than former candle sources such as tallow. Bayberry cloth and candles were among the first products to be exported from the American colonies to England.
Every part of the black walnut tree (Juglans nigra) is fragrant when brushed, crushed, rubbed, or scraped. Arguably, the most pleasant smell comes from the skin of the fruit when scratched.
NAME:Juglans nigra (black walnut)
TYPE OF PLANT: deciduous trees
PART OF PLANT: fall fruits
PRIMARY SCENT: pungent
SECONDARY SCENTS: fresh, green, black pepper, acrid, ginger
Falling leaves form the forest duff, the fragile layer of organic matter that woodland plants, animals, and fungi depend upon. I live in a hardwood forest, on an island in a river. There are deciduous sugar maples, hickories, oaks, and white pine on the highest ground. And there are plenty of black walnut trees, Juglans nigra. Before the leaves fall, the fruits, almost the size of tennis balls, drop to the ground. Their aroma announces the arrival of the autumn season.
The skin of the hard fruits feels like sandpaper. They are a wonderful grass-green color. The flesh is very hard. If you break into it with some kind of tool and aren’t wearing gloves, your hands will be stained dark brown. One way to open the hard shell is to run over it with a car. But, thankfully, you don’t have to do that to sample its piney, ginger, spicy, and sweet, if medicinal, fragrance. Just pick one up and sniff, and, for a stronger whiff, scratch the surface with a stone.
You can buy black walnuts stripped of their coats for cooking. The more common nuts sold at the grocery store are English walnuts (J. regia), the leaves of which are also aromatic.
I call plants that smell like other plants “smell-alikes.” The flowers of the coconut pie orchid, Maxillariella tenuifolia, really do smell the way the plant’s name suggests.
These examples have a citrus smell: lemongrass, lemon verbena, variegated lemon rose geranium, and lemon gem marigold.
FRUITY
We all know what strawberries smell like, and peaches and apples, and could easily identify them even if blindfolded. Fruity smells are self-explanatory and often come to mind when sampling scents of other things—the leaves of Brazilian bachelor’s buttons (Centratherum), for instance, smell like pineapple. Apple-scented geranium leaves mimic that fruit.
Take the citrus smell-alikes. The blades of lemongrass smell, well, like a sharp and clean version of lemon. Surprisingly, some trillium species are fragrant, including T. luteum, the wood lily, with its lemon-lime scent.
There are flowers that smell like honeydew melon or green apple—or like both at the same time. Many modern hybrid tea roses smell fruity, evoking blends of berries or, perhaps, peach with black tea. Cucumbers are fruits and crushed borage leaves impart that smell. There’s even a coconut pie orchid (Maxillariella tenuifolia).
Yellow Freesia blossoms have about the most pleasurable penetrating, sweet-smelling fruity fragrance, and, of course, there is heliotrope (Heliotropium arborescens), which usually smells, to me, like cherries (with baby powder).
Some plants got their common names for their smells. One old-fashioned name for heliotrope was “cherry pie.” That’s perfect.
The chocolate orchid, Oncidium ‘Sharry Baby’.
Heliotrope can be used to edge a planting bed. This white one smelled like the original Play-Doh.
Heliotropes are among the most fragrant frost-tender evergreen woody perennials—cold kills them. Native to Peru, they can grow to six feet in frost-free areas. Most people buy new plants at the nursery or garden center in the spring and compost them at season’s end, but they can be home-grown from seed.
Heliotropes have flower clusters over dark green embossed oval leaves. The flowers can be dark violet, light violet, or white. They all smell, but with varying intensity. The simple dark violet species, Heliotropium arborescens, seems to smell the most.
The flowers smell like cherries, with almond and baby powder. Some people claim the fragrance is vanilla, and there is a variety called ‘Strawberry’. I smelled one white one that reminded me very much of the odor of the original Play-Doh. Because of the strong flower scent, deer avoid these plants, but bees and butterflies love them.
Although young plants are short, you won’t have to get down on your hands and knees to sample their smell. It will float up to your nose, but don’t be surprised if you end up at their level after all. I like to lift a potted specimen to my nose for super-fragrant sampling, so I grow them in pots, and they are great in window boxes.
Chinese quince has fall color, patchy bark, and intensely fragrant fruits.
We expect spring and summer to offer many perfumed plants, but fall holds some surprises: fruits, for instance—some to eat fresh and a few enjoyed just for their fragrance.
The fast-growing Chinese quince tree, Pseudocydonia sinensis, is semi-evergreen in warm climates but hardy, and, in cold climates, still holds its leaves very late into the fall, when they turn purple, yellow, and red. The bark is exquisite, even when the tree is at a young age, with patchy colors that make the trunk look as if it were camouflaged. Scented pink flowers come and go at lilac time—I often miss them. But I’m interested in the fragrant fall fruits. These are yellow when ripe, oblong, about the size of goose eggs, but as hard as wood. They are aromatic, and the smell can easily fill a room. It is fruity, musky, and sweet in a way that makes it one of those odors that you can feel as much as smell, or so it seems.
Edible quince is useful in cooking, but the Chinese quince isn’t. People do make marmalade and preserves, but it must take a whole lot of cooking. The best use of the fruits is to enjoy their smell, which lasts for weeks, indoors, until they begin to turn brown. As happens with many fruit-bearing trees, there is an abundant harvest some years, fewer fruits in others.
In October, look for bumpy Osage orange fruits, seen here on a table runner made by Ellen, to gather and enjoy indoors for a while. Their unique acrid aroma is somewhat like grapefruit, lime, and ginger.
NAME:Maclura pomifera (Osage orange, hedge apple)
TYPE OF PLANT: deciduous trees
PART OF PLANT: fall fruits
PRIMARY SCENT: grapefruit rind
SECONDARY SCENTS: acrid, pungent, lime, ginger, cedar
A beautiful, fragrant fruit is the hedge apple, also called Osage orange because it shared a homeland with the Native American Osage tribe. The tree hails from eastern Texas, southeastern Oklahoma, and southwestern Arkansas, and in the 1800s it was commonly grown for hedgerows on farms all over the country. Most were kept low by cutting and rarely bore fruit, but, over the years, many that were left or are descendants have grown into gnarled trees that do. Their hard, attractive knobby cut branches are weather-resistant and often used to make rustic outdoor furniture.
I picked some of the bumpy, brain-like, softball-size chartreuse fruits from the side of the road where they fell. I enjoyed their room-filling, fresh fragrance—a somewhat acrid blend of grapefruit, green mango, spices, and more—for about a month and then returned them, for future generations, to the spot where I had gathered them. I have to warn not to park beneath a tree to avoid dents from falling fruit.
The flowers on the small Franklinia alatamaha tree look like large single camellias and smell fruity, like litchi nuts.
NAME:Franklinia alatamaha (Benjamin Franklin tree)
Much to my sorrow, one tree that I have tried to grow without success seems not to be able to tolerate the lowest winter temperatures in my garden. The tree has a rich history, having been discovered flowering along the Altamaha River in Georgia by John and William Bartram in 1765. William returned to collect seeds. Shortly thereafter, the plant disappeared from the wild.
William was able to get the tree to flower and named the genus in honor of his late father’s close friend Benjamin Franklin. The tree is Franklinia alatamaha. The specific epithet comes from the name of the river, which somehow got misspelled.
I’ve seen some terrific, healthy and happy specimens growing in northern climates close to the ocean, where temperatures are moderated, and modulated.
The flowers are large and white, quite a bit like those of Stewartia, a genus to which the tree is related. They also look like single camellias, other members of the tea family, Theaceae. The fragrance is delightful and very complex. I noted light honeysuckle until five o’clock in the evening, then it became richer, with rose, lemon verbena, mandarin orange, slight fermentation, and, perhaps most of all, litchi nut fruit.
The spiral form of the Vigna’s blossoms has given rise to the common name snail flower. They are an intriguing oddity that also have a fruit-like scent, with freesia, honey, and indole.
When a vine’s stem circles in the air, it is searching for a vertical scaffold. When it touches a potential prop, something happens. Vigna caricalla, the fragrant snail or corkscrew vine, is a good example. Cells on one side of the stem begin to grow faster than those on the other, and the vine twines around the support.
The flowers are the plant’s attraction. They look a bit like snails’ shells. The fragrance is fruity, like freesia with honey and indole (a light scent of mothballs).
A frilly modern hybrid passionflower.
NAME:Passiflora species and varieties (passionflower, passion fruit, maypop)
Among the most incredible flowers of all are those of the Passiflora, the passionflower vine. There is a hardy native North American species, P. incarnata, the maypop, but for the most part these are tender perennials. The scent of the flowers varies by species and variety. I smelled fruit and indole in the maypop, but Ellen thought the flower smelled like peanut butter. Maybe it was the indole?
Although some may think the name passionflower reflects the fruits’ possible aphrodisiacal properties, it’s ecclesiastical: The plant is named for the Passion of Christ. One legend claims that, in his visions, Saint Francis saw a vine growing on the cross. The Jesuit missionaries in South America believed the Passiflora to be that vine and named it the flor de las cinco llagas, “flower of the five wounds.” To them, the symbolism was obvious: The ten outer petals represented the faithful apostles—whose number excluded Peter (because he deceived Jesus) and Judas (for his betrayal). The corona is the crown of thorns. Five stamens symbolize the five wounds on Christ’s body. The ovary, the hammer, and the three stigmas—the top of the female organ—signify the three nails used to put Christ on the cross. In other interpretations, the stigma stands for the Holy Trinity. When the missionaries observed the indigenous people eating the fruit, they took it to mean that the natives hungered for Christianity.
My passion is for the intricate beauty of the magnificent, fragrant flowers with scents that range, by variety, from vanilla to honeysuckle with indole, to a fresh-cut orange.
The hardy North American native maypop, Passiflora incarnata, has an elusive scent. Ellen thought the flowers smelled like peanut butter. I smelled fruit and indole.
One popular species for hanging baskets is P. caerulea, the South American blue passionflower, which smells like Juicy Fruit gum, all-purpose cleaner, and indole.
Passionflowers come in many colors. P. coccinea is the red passionflower, with petals bent back to give hummingbirds easy access to nectar.
Camellia lutchuensis hybrid ‘Vernal Breeze’.
NAME:Camellia species and hybrids (camellia)
TYPE OF PLANT: evergreen shrub
PART OF PLANT: fall to spring flowers
PRIMARY SCENT: mixed fruit
SECONDARY SCENTS: lily of the valley, black tea, hyacinth, winter jasmine, lemon, anise
Camellia, one of the best-known genera of fall-to-spring-flowering evergreen shrubs for warmer climates, is not famous for fragrance. C. japonica, for example, has dramatic, large white, pink or red single or double flowers, but few are fragrant.
C. sasanqua are the fall-bloomers, some of which are still flowering as winter begins, and often have a scent described as yeasty. A favorite sasanqua in my sunroom is the undemanding variety ‘Yuletide’. Bright red flowers that smell fruity begin around Thanksgiving and continue through Christmas. Look for cultivars that have “fragrant” or “scent” in their names.
Less known Camellia kissii smells lemony, and C. grijsii smells like anise. A cultivar of the latter, named ‘Zhenzhucha’, with flowers resembling apple blossoms, smells like licorice.
C. lutchuensis has small flowers and is only hardy in zones 8 to 10. Its one-inch waxy white flowers remind me of the smell of black tea and maybe jasmine. When it is hybridized with a hardier species, the result is sturdier and still fragrant. The one I grow in the cool sunroom produces silver-dollar-size flowers that smell strongly like lily of the valley and hyacinth, with wintergreen, honey, and hints of lipstick and violets. The plant came from Camellia Forest Nursery in North Carolina with “C. F. 44” on the tag, but it now has the name ‘Vernal Breeze’. It begins to open dozens of flowers in early February.
Commercially available fragrant hybrids of C. lutchuensis include semidouble, pale pink C. ‘High Fragrance’, with four-inch-wide flowers; ‘Fragrant Pink’, which smells like Osmanthus fragrans, a kind of apricot and jasmine; C. ‘Minato-No-Akebono’, with small, shell-pink single flowers; double white C. ‘Cinnamon Cindy’; C. ‘Scentuous’, with large semidouble fragrant flowers; and the warm pink double called ‘Spring Mist’.
Two of my favorite tulips, ‘Apricot Beauty’ (above) and ‘Prinses Irene’, which smell fruity and freesia-like, with a little musky pumpkin flesh.
If I were asked how I felt about the color orange in the spring garden, my first thought might be that it was too bright, but then I would remember the pale tulip ‘Apricot Beauty’ and vivid ‘Prinses Irene’, with dusky purple, feathery flames that flare up from the base of the dark orange petals (tepals). The additional attraction is that these flowers have a fruity, freesia-like, and pumpkin-flesh fragrance.
The species Tulipa sylvestris, a long-blooming lily-flowered yellow, also has a fruity freesia scent.
Some others with that fruity, sweet smell are the clear yellow ‘Bellona’; vermilion triumph ‘Doctor Plesman’; heirloom red and yellow ‘Prince of Austria’; and ‘Prince Carnival’, which is a Rembrandt type with vivid yellow-and-red flowers. One tulip always described as fragrant is ‘De Wet’, also found as ‘Generaal de Wet’. It is a single orange one with scarlet streaks.
Some other early-flowering tulips are not so subtle or demure, with their big, fat, double peony-type flowers. ‘Cool Crystal’ presents even more of a shock when you smell it—pure wintergreen. More double fragrant tulips include antiques such as dark cherry-pink ‘Electra’ from 1905, milk-white ‘Schoonoord’ from 1909, and ‘Mr. van der Hoef’ from 1911.
Buddleia ‘Miss Molly’ is one of the new noninvasive, sterile varieties entering the market, with typical fragrances of cherry, powder, almond, and tobacco.
NAME:Buddleia species and varieties (butterfly bush)
It’s unusual for a garden book to feature shrubs you shouldn’t plant. That’s exactly what’s going to happen here. There are two main reasons not to plant Buddleia. One is that they are invasive—self-sowing in warmer climates. Two: Butterflies love them.
That second reason doesn’t sound bad, but the butterflies may be more attracted to the Buddleia than to the plants with which they evolved, and which have more nutritious nectar. And Buddleia offer nothing to larval stages of those butterflies.
Nobody’s perfect.
Plant breeders are working to help with the issue of self-sowing by developing sterile varieties, and there has been progress.
It turns out that Buddleia’s flowers contain many fragrant chemicals. Among the compounds is enzaldehyde, which smells like almond. Another, 6-methyl-5-hepten-2-one, brings a fermented piña colada to mind. Hexylacetate gives off a fruity, green apple, banana, pear, and grass odor, and 4-oxoisophorone is woody. Betacyclocitral has a tobacco smell and cinnamaldehyde smells like cinnamon.
Whispy B. alternifolia blooms early in Marty Carson’s impressive garden and, unlike most butterfly bushes, which bloom on new wood, should not be cut back until just after flowering.
Buddleia hybrids (left to right): ‘Glass Slippers’; ‘Black Knight’; ‘Nanho Purple’; ‘Dark Dynasty’; ‘White Profusion’; ‘Glass Slippers’. All are invasive and, if grown, should be deadheaded religiously.
Like Magnolia ‘Lois’, many of the deciduous yellow hybrids have a lemony smell.
M. virginiana, sweet bay magnolia, has lemon-scented flowers. Crushed leaves smell like bay laurel.
M. grandiflora, the evergreen southern magnolia, has blossoms ten inches or more wide. Most of these also have a lemon scent, although a few varieties smell like ginger.
An old favorite, M. × soulangeana, the saucer magnolia, blooms too early for my garden—frost ruins the buds. Fragrant tulip-shaped flowers up to eight inches across are dark pink with white inside and smell like lemon, with smoky tea, candy, and violet.
NAME:Magnolia species and varieties (magnolia, banana shrub, champaca)
When books and online references describe the bright white or pink flowers of star magnolias, they usually call them “fragrant”—not very specific. Most Magnolia stellata are lightly lemon-scented.
Some years, the old saucer magnolia (Magnolia × soulangeana) that was on this property when I came here bloomed with lovely tulip-like saucer-shaped four- to six-inch-wide blossoms—white deeply flushed with rose-pink or violet. Other years, the frosted blossoms turned to brown mush. In successful years, the fragrance was rich and complex. At first, the smell was a bit like tulips, then fruity and lemony. On second and third sniffs, there was a woody note, smoky like Lapsang Souchong tea, with candy and violet, something like the heavy scent of the Oriental lily and wintergreen. Don’t give up after the first sampling, especially if you don’t smell anything. Give flowers and leaves a second chance. There might be something there to discover.
Some of the lovely yellow-flowered hybrids developed by the Brooklyn Botanic Garden bloom very early, like large ‘Elizabeth’, with its pale-yellow flowers. Thankfully, others, like ‘Lois’, are not quite so precocious and bloom after the danger of frost has passed. The large pale-yellow flowers smell like sweet lemon ice—fruit juice and zest.
M. virginiana is a small semi-evergreen southern native tree hardy in zone 7, with varieties for zone 6. It’s called the sweet bay magnolia for the spicy scent of the leaves when crushed, and it bears lemonade-scented flowers on and off.
M. grandiflora is the evergreen southern magnolia that blossoms sporadically through summer where there is no danger from cold. But it is not generally hardy in zones colder than zone 7. Some varieties, however, can stand lower temperatures—for instance, ‘Edith Bogue’. Planted as a screen from the road on my zone 6 property, it laughs at being sprayed with road salt and thrives in temperatures down to minus 10°F. Its huge ten-inch-wide flowers smell lemony, with a whisper of turpentine.
One shorter variety, with smaller leaves, is slightly less hardy. ‘Bracken’s Brown Beauty’ has thick, cinnamon-colored, suede-like indumenta on the leaves’ undersides. I have four planted in some shade. They bear eight- to ten-inch-wide pure white flowers that smell exactly like sharp, tingling ginger.
Perhaps the most strongly scented magnolia shrubs are plants formerly in the genus Michelia. Magnolia figo, with glossy dark evergreen leaves, is hardy only in zones 8 to 10. The small, six-petaled, cup-shaped, one-and-a-half-inch-wide blossoms look like miniature southern magnolia flowers the color of wood shavings, with garnet-red margins. It’s called banana shrub, and the flowers smell exactly like banana taffy or banana oil.
Magnolia champaca is the prized champak or joy perfume tree. It is the principal scent component of Joy, the second-best-selling fine fragrance in the world. The blossom’s alluring fragrance is like civet or musk, with notes of tea, drying leaves, wood, spices, star anise, herbal/green, a little skunky, and winelike, with a whiff of mint and orange blossom.
The leaves of pineapple sage, Salvia splendens, smell exactly the way the common name suggests. Late in summer, spires of scarlet flowers appear.
NAME:Salvia splendens (pineapple sage)
TYPE OF PLANT: tender perennial
PART OF PLANT: season-long leaves
PRIMARY SCENT: pineapple
SECONDARY SCENTS: tropical fruit
Rub the leaves of pineapple sage, Salvia elegans, and the essence of the sweet ripe fruit is there. The scent is simply light, sweet, and fruity. The leaves, which can be dried for tea, have long been used as medicinal herbs with antibacterial and antioxidant properties. The plant is hardy in zones 8 to 10, or in a sheltered spot in zone 7. For me, it blooms late in the season, with brilliant scarlet flowers that are magnets for butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds, and can be picked for a mint-flavored garnish.
There is a luminous selection of pineapple sage called Salvia elegans ‘Aurea’, sometimes marketed as ‘Golden Delicious’. This variety has bright green-gold foliage that looks even more spectacular in September, when sporting the complementary red flowers.
Pink buttons bloom for most of the summer on Centratherum punctatum. The pleated leaves, when crushed, smell like pineapple.
Centratherum punctatum also has a pineapple smell when the heavily veined, soft-toothed leaves are rubbed. This member of the daisy family with lavender pink, thistle-like flowers blooms from spring into summer. Centratherum has plenty of common names, including Brazilian bachelor’s button and porcupine flower. Bees and butterflies love the colorful buttons.
Centratherum is a tender herbaceous perennial hardy to about 32°F and root-hardy to about 25°F, meaning that, after a rare freeze in zone 9, the plants may come back from the roots.
The sweetest enduring scent of Freesia is easily described as fruity—like honey, cool orange blossoms, or Froot Loops. Yellow kinds smell the most.
NAME:Freesia hybrids (freesia)
TYPE OF PLANT: tender corm
PART OF PLANT: winter to spring flowers
PRIMARY SCENT: tropical fruit
SECONDARY SCENTS: honey, orange blossom, wild rose
If I had to pick one fragrant flower to share my desert island, it would be Freesia. These funnel-shaped blossoms are used in this book as a baseline for describing floral scents, as freesias do not smell exactly like any other flower.
I would say the fragrance is fruity. I could be more specific and mention plum and honey, but a description is elusive for this unique scent that is high as opposed to deep, light compared to heavy, yet strong enough to fill a room and be intoxicating.
Those we know from the florist’s or forced to bloom in pots or grown in gardens in zones 9 and 10, where summers are dry, are hybrids. Although freesias come in many colors, each one has a varying potency, and the yellow ones seem to be strongest with white as a second.
Freesias are grown from corms, like gladiolus and crocus. In England, you can purchase pretreated corms for forcing. Unlike most spring-flowering bulbs, which need a period of cold to flower, these need heat. The idea is to simulate the hot, dry summer of their homeland, the Cape Province of South Africa.
Calycanthus species and varieties include, clockwise from center top: white C. ‘Venus’; chartreuse C. ‘Athens’; C. sinensis; and red C. floridus.
NAME:Calycanthus floridus (Carolina allspice)
TYPE OF PLANT: deciduous shrub
PART OF PLANT: late spring to early summer flowers
One of my favorite plants for a fragrance challenge with friends (Name that Smell!) is Calycanthus floridus, a large deciduous shrub also known as Carolina allspice, strawberry bush, sweet bubbies, or common sweet shrub.
The native species is found in the hardwood forest understory along rivers and streams in the Appalachians and the Piedmont. It is a suckering shrub, sending up branching shoots that grow from six- to ten-feet-tall in a colony that may be even wider. It has lustrous green embossed leaves, but the inch-plus-wide starry maroon flowers from April to July are the primary contestants in the name game.
The buds smell a little, much more when swelling, and hardly at all as they fade. The fragrance wafts across the garden when the humidity is right, nearly always beginning at five o’clock in the evening. I can smell them from thirty feet downwind. The pollinator is a beetle, and the flower’s fragrance and design have evolved an elaborate strategy. Beetles wiggle into the tightly overlapping tepals (something in between petals and sepals). The beetle has trouble escaping, and may be trapped for up to two days, by which time the pollen on the anthers has ripened. The tepals open and release the flower’s pollen-covered captive, so it can go off to do the same thing with another blossom.
Friends talk about their impressions of the fragrance, and they invariably differ. I’ve heard the scent described as bubblegum, melon, crushed strawberries, banana, pineapple, or lacquer thinner, and I can imagine all of those. The game is not a competition, as everyone stands by his or her description with certainty, as do I. The aroma of the red species consistently reminds me of the insides of oak whiskey barrels, like the half-barrel planters sold at the garden center.
Sweet shrub is tolerant of a wide range of soil conditions in full sun to quite a bit of shade in zones 4 to 9. You do need to prune to keep it back from the path. As you cut the branches, they release a lavender fragrance, but it fades in an instant.
As if all this wasn’t enough, there is a cultivar called ‘Athens’, introduced by woody plant expert Michael Dirr. This is a smaller shrub with chartreuse flowers that, to me, smell like cantaloupe melon at one stage and Granny Smith apples at another.
New varieties are arriving all the time. Their proliferation started when scentless Calycanthus chinensis from China came on the market. This plant, with lovely white, yellow, and pink camellia-like flowers, has contributed to the hybridization of new plants, some with large fragrant flowers, others devoid of scent.
Guests describe the smell of Calycanthus floridus flowers as bubble gum, lacquer thinner, crushed strawberries, banana, and other fruits. I smell whiskey barrels.
NAME:Iris bearded hybrids (iris)
TYPE OF PLANT: hardy, rhizomatous perennial
PART OF PLANT: spring to summer flowers
PRIMARY SCENT: grape
SECONDARY SCENTS: wintergreen, star anise, chocolate
There are scores of iris species and thousands of hybrids. The first to bloom are the oddly scented reticulata types. They make me think of the smell of lipstick or violets. The season continues for months, finally ending with the tall bearded iris and some rebloomers.
The genus name comes from the name of the Greek goddess of the rainbow, a messenger for the Olympian gods. Irises come in every color. The plants most associated with scent have beards—a line of fuzzy hairs like caterpillars on top of the falls (the three lower petals of the flower). The three upper, vertical petals are the standards. The beards are often a different color from the petals, to better direct pollinators to their nectar rewards.
My first bearded irises to bloom are the miniature dwarfs, in March and April. The standard dwarf bearded follow. Then there are the intermediates, which have large flowers on plants of medium height. Next are the confusingly named miniature tall bearded iris, with small flowers on stalks about the same height as those of the intermediate plants. Adding to the list is the class known as “border bearded iris.” These are the same height as the miniature tall and the intermediate bearded but have flowers larger than the former’s and smaller than the latter’s.
The next class is the plant that comes to mind when we hear the word “iris”: the tall bearded varieties with large flowers on stalks taller than a rather specific 27.5 inches. These are generally the most fragrant. I say they are fruity because I find the dominant scent to be grape or grape soda. Very often, that is joined by the smell of pepsin or methyl salicylate—wintergreen.
I’ve smelled curry and chocolate in some smaller irises, but I’ve come upon powder, carrot, lilac, rose, star anise, lily, cooked potato, and something a little stinky in the tall types. I recently saw one that reminded me of the violet-colored ancestral species Iris pallida. There wasn’t a label, but iris expert Kelly D. Norris, director of horticulture and education at the Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden, thought it might be ‘Great Lakes’ from 1938. I could easily smell grape from six feet away.
Tall bearded iris flowers, for instance, those of ‘Wintry Sky’, often smell of wintergreen or grape soda.
Miniature tall bearded iris ‘Bumblebee Deelite’ smells subtly like Chinese five spice: ground cloves, cinnamon, fennel seeds, star anise, and Szechuan pepper.
The earliest to bloom is Iris reticulata. This type, ‘Harmony’, smelled like violets or lipstick.
The wide variety of iris shapes, sizes, and primarily colors remind me that they get their genus name from the goddess of the rainbow.
Tall bearded iris (left to right): white rebloomer ‘Immortality’ (citrus-scented); peach ‘Diamond Blush’ (Creamsicle and clove); dark red ‘Autumn Rose’ (concord grape).
One small native and dwarf-bearded varieties of iris: Blue Iris cristata (violet-scented); mauve ‘Sweet Devotion’ (citrus and powder); yellow ‘Caramel Celeste’ (baby powder); dark violet and yellow ‘Becoming’ (powder); pale salmon ‘Little Love Song’ (orange, cherry); brown with gold ‘Kinky Boots’ (sweet baby powder); maroon ‘Red Rabbit’ (baby powder and beer); cream and gold ‘Lucky Locket’ (light orange); purple and pale yellow ‘Frenetic’ (light powder); small orange ‘Eye of the Tiger’ (clove and indole).
Tropical water lilies bloom either day or night, and are usually held above the water. Some smell spicy, sweet, indolic, and of hyacinth with loquat.
The common water lily genus, Nymphaea, includes fifty species of herbaceous aquatic perennials worldwide. Some are cold-hardy, others tropical. The hardy ones bloom during the day and bear flowers, on the leaves (called pads), on short stems. The tropical ones open day or night, by variety, on stems six to ten inches above the leaves. The hardy ones will survive as long as the rhizomes underwater do not freeze solid, in zones 4 to 10.
A common name of the wild white N. odorata, a local species in northwestern New Jersey, is fragrant water lily. Its flowers smell floral, citrusy or lemony. There are over a hundred cultivars in a range of colors—pink, red, yellow, and orange—but not all are scented.
The tropical Nymphaea varieties add violet and blue shades. One I smelled in Erika Shank’s Long Island garden was spicy and sweet, with indole or mothballs, hyacinth with loquat.
Water lily leaves are thick and large, able to support an occasional visit from a frog, but not nearly as large as the leaves of the Victoria amazonica tropical types. These gigantic plants, with leaves up to five feet across, bloom at night. The first evening, the flower, white and female, releases a pineapple scent as well as heat (the blossoms are able to regulate temperature). A pollinating partner comes by and gets trapped as the flower closes. The next evening, the flower, now pink and male, opens to release the visitor to fly off to find another white flower. The blossom, no longer fragrant, closes and sinks below the surface.
Lemony Nymphaea odorata is the North American native from which many hybrids have been bred.
The flower of the giant Victoria amazonica lily opens white and smells like pineapple, closes at night on a pollinator, and opens again the following day, pollinated and pink.
Two very double ‘Serendipity Red’ (left) and two ‘Sugar Pie Pink’. These smell peppery, with clove and plastic.
NAME:Nelumbo species and varieties (lotus)
TYPE OF PLANT: aquatic herbaceous perennials
PART OF PLANT: late summer flowers
PRIMARY SCENT: citrusy
SECONDARY SCENTS: herbal/green, cherry, spicy
Depending on the species and variety, lotus flowers are lightly to extremely fragrant. The blossoms shoot up on tall stems above large, flat, water-repelling leaves. There is one genus and two species: Nelumbo nucifera, the sacred lotus, from southern Asia and Australia, and N. lutea, the American lotus (also called water lotus, water chinquapin, and yellow lotus)—a threatened plant protected in New Jersey. I got a chance to smell the latter up close. I found the cream-colored flowers to be lightly citrusy, herbal/green, sweet, and spicy, a sultry floral accompanied, of course, by the faint scent of sweet marsh mud.
I’ve read descriptions of the scent of N. nucifera as “pleasant,” “heady,” “fruity,” or “sweet.” Ellen thought the ones she scanned smelled like opening a box of cherry cough drops, with plastic and peppery clove.
Lotus thrive in shallow water. The plants by the water’s edge are the so-called marginal plants, and many are fragrant. Vigorous lizard tail, Saururus cernuus, has white flowers in early summer, which give it the common name. The fuzzy flowers smell of anise and Coppertone suntan lotion.
Spiranthes or lady’s tresses (Spiranthes odorata) is an orchid that grows in acidic soil in boggy situations near carnivorous plants. It is native from eastern Canada south to Florida and Texas, zones 5 to 9. From late summer to fall, small, jasmine- and vanilla-scented white flowers appear, densely arranged in a spiraling row, on spikes nine to eighteen inches tall. The orchid can be planted in a constantly moist spot or in a pot sitting in a bowl of water along with pitcher plants.
A tall semi-double variety smells fruity, with narcissus.
Citrus-scented flower of carnivorous Sarracenia lutea.
Gardeners don’t usually grow carnivorous plants for their fragrance, or even for their flowers. The big attraction is probably that they eat insects and other tiny animals. These collectors’ plants do have fascinating blossoms, however.
The flowers of the hardy Sarracenia, native to highly acidic and constantly moist soils or sphagnum moss communities in bogs, appear in spring, ahead of or alongside the emerging leaves or pitchers. Their scent may be sweet or fetid, light or strong. The downward-facing blooms form on one- to three-foot-tall stems, and, once pollinated, usually by bees, are followed by equally unexpected seedpods. I find the blossoms of Sarracenia flava, which grows naturally from Virginia south to northern Florida and west to Alabama, citrusy, but some people say they smell like cat urine. The leaves of the white S. leucophylla, which is, unfortunately, harvested from the wild as a cut flower, have a sweet, minty smell with a hint of smoke.
I grow my hardy pitcher plants in a large plastic bowl with a few small holes drilled in the bottom for slow drainage. In summer, the container lives outdoors in a sunny location. In autumn, the leaves turn colors and then brown after a freeze. That’s when the bowl goes into the cold crawl space under the garage, where the temperature sometimes falls to 20°F. I check from time to time to be sure the medium hasn’t dried out. In spring, the container moves back outside.
NAME:Oenothera species (evening primrose)
TYPE OF PLANT: biennial, perennial
PART OF PLANT: late summer flowers
PRIMARY SCENT: freesia
SECONDARY SCENTS: fruity, floral/sweet, lemon
The evening primrose is not a primrose (the name is otherwise reserved for Primula species). My conjecture is that the Oenothera received their common name from the color of the flowers—primrose yellow—of the more familiar species, such as Oenothera biennis. There are some 150 species, with white, pink, rose-colored, and of course yellow flowers on short to tall plants, and many are fragrant. Several species are pollinated by nocturnal hawk moths. O. biennis, the somewhat weedy, tall biennial around my neighborhood, can reach seven feet in a season. The smell of the night-blooming flowers is fruity—very much like the scent of the freesia blossom, with a little lemon—and they stay open long enough the next day for you to smell them.
Like O. biennis, O. speciosa grows along roadsides and woodland edges, and in prairies, meadows, and disturbed land. You find it growing on farmland between the crop rows. This evening primrose isn’t yellow; it’s pink. O. macrocarpa is the Missouri evening primrose. It opens in the late afternoon and remains open until the following morning—lasting a single day.
O. caespitosa, the tufted, desert, or fragrant evening primrose, a perennial native of western North America, makes nearly flat rosettes of gray-green leaves from which buds appear on short stems. The blossoms begin as pleated white petals that bulge out from between the sepals, and, if they are picked about an hour before sunset and brought inside, they can be watched unfolding in slow motion into great silky white chalices four inches across. Through the night, the flowers pour out a heavy, sweet lemony fragrance with a touch of spice.
Seeds for these plants are available, and that is the method most often used to grow them.
Oenothera biennis grows in a ditch by the side of the road next to a farm in rural New Jersey. The flowers smell like freesias.
O. speciosa is a pink-flowered evening primrose.
Evening primrose flowers open in the afternoon, and often remain open into the next day. Cultivation improves the quality of the flowers.
Among the vast variety of citrus hybrids are yellow lemon; yellow-orange ‘Improved Meyer’ lemon; bumpy bitter or Seville orange; smooth bergamot; young, fuzzy green, trifoliate orange; and green banana-shaped finger limes.
Petitgrain is a perfume ingredient made from bitter orange leaves, but the leaves of most citrus, like Meyer lemon and a variegated version shown above, smell green, woody, pungent, and floral when creased.
NAME:Citrus species and varieties (lemon, orange, lime, etc.)
TYPE OF PLANT: trees, some shrubs
PART OF PLANT: evergreen leaves, fruit rind
PRIMARY SCENT: lime herbal/green
SECONDARY SCENTS: lime peel, acrid, green, citrus
Have you ever walked into a room when someone was peeling an orange? These smells are so distinctive, we can tell a lemon from an orange, or a lime from a grapefruit, with our eyes shut. Unlike most essential oils, citrus oil is obtained by cold expression—simply bursting the fragrant oil-filled cells by squeezing the rind.
The Buddha’s Hand or fingered citron is a bizarre gnarled fruit with no juice—it’s all redolent rind and sweet pith. The smell isn’t so much lemony as similar to the scent of violets. Every part of the citrus plants has essence to share. Crush a leaf and you’ll find a rich, verdant, herbal/green fragrance that’s pungent and brassy. The haunting, mysterious, spicy leaves and bumpy fruits of the makrut or K-lime (Citrus hystrix) are commonly used for flavoring in Asian—especially Thai—cuisine.
One of my favorite shrubs is a selection of Poncirus trifoliata (syn. Citrus trifoliata), the hardy trifoliate (three-part-leafed) orange called ‘Flying Dragon’, with contorted stems. This deciduous shrub grows outdoors in my zone 6 garden. Most citrus have thorns, and those on ‘Flying Dragon’ are curved hooks. Poncirus bears inedible but fragrant fuzzy yellow fruits a little larger than golf balls.
The most unusual edible citrus, however, might be the Australian finger lime, Citrus australasica (syn. Microcitrus australasica), which I grow as a houseplant. This tree comes from the bush in Australia—not, like most citrus, from China—and the fruits are shaped like blimps. Most amazing, the juicy globular vesicles inside are firm and free. Cut across the slender two-and-one-half-inch-long fruits and squeeze the halves: The vesicles ooze out and are like crunchy lime-flavored caviar. Your fingers and the air will be imbued with a powerful lime scent.
The hardy trifoliate orange is a citrus that can live in temperatures as low as minus 10°F. This one is the contorted selection ‘Flying Dragon’.
Tabernaemontana africana, called Samoan gardenia, smells like its common namesake.
Plumeria varieties seem to smell differently, depending on variety and color. Some flowers are fruity like peaches, others suggest gardenia.
HEAVY
Heavy scents are rich, deep, strong, and unavoidable. And yet, unlike some of the superhoney scents, they are not cloying. In the plants with heavy scents, rich fragrances—drawn from other categories in this book—are concentrated together, among them, spicy cloves, talcum powder, old rose, burned sugar, vanilla, anise, grapefruit, and indole. Think of mothballs the next couple of times you smell a strongly scented flower.
A heavy scent is just that. The molecules do not drift up into the air but flow closer to the ground, often around nose level. If some of the scents in other categories are like silk scarves or linen waistcoats, heavy ones are like overcoats—sometimes fur overcoats.
Gardenias have a heavy scent. The famously fragrant Tabernaemontana africana, the Samoan gardenia, smells like its common namesake, but sprinkled with cinnamon and clove. Oriental lilies have heavy scents that intensify in the evening and through the night. Other flowers with heavy scents are orange blossoms; Carissa, or Natal plum; and Plumeria species called frangipani, with flowers that are said to smell different from one color to another, with essences of peach, citrus, honeysuckle, grape, rose, ginger, coconut, gardenia, or jasmine.
HEAVY PLANTS
The tuberose, Polianthes tuberosa, is famed for its rich scent of gardenia, coconut, mint, and indole.
NAME:Polianthes tuberosa (tuberose)
TYPE OF PLANT: tender rhizome
PART OF PLANT: late summer flowers
PRIMARY SCENT: indole
SECONDARY SCENTS: lily, coconut, mint, gardenia
One of the most prized fragrances of all is that of the tuberose, Polianthes tuberosa. I find the scent to be a heavy blend including syrupy lily, and a suggestion of coconut. The flowers are popular ingredients for perfume and are picked either in bud or in the evening. During the day, my flowers don’t smell at all.
P. tuberosa and all related species are from Mexico, where they have been cultivated for centuries, but they are extinct in the wild. The rhizomes are best grown in pots. That way, they will be easiest to carry over in a frost-free place from year to year.
Choose pots, tubs, or other containers with plenty of drainage holes and fill with a high-quality, well-draining potting medium. Place the rhizomes, pointy end up, two to three inches below the surface and about six inches apart. If a few of the rhizomes are attached to each other, don’t break them apart; plant the whole clump. (They can be potted indoors in April to get a head start, and moved outside in a month and a half or so.)
After planting, water the medium to settle it around the rhizomes. Place the container where it will receive full sunlight. Continue to water an inch or more per week if there isn’t plenty of rain, and feed with a balanced fertilizer, following the package directions. Tuberose are heavy feeders.
Green growth will appear in a few weeks. Flowers will form in 90 to 120 days. Cut off the stems after they finish blooming and move the pots to a spot where the potting medium can dry. You can store the rhizomes in dry soil in their pots or clean and store them in a cool, dry spot in a paper bag until next April.
The variety most often sold is ‘Double Pearl’. Although they are not as strongly scented as the species, the bone white flowers have a bit of orange blossom and hyacinth in their smell. Pale pink and light yellow varieties are also available.
The single white species from Mexico may be the most fragrant. But there is a popular double variety, ‘The Pearl’, as well as yellow or pink versions, like the pale pink variety above, ‘Sensation’.
Abelia mosanensis, the fragrant abelia, has a heavy scent like winter jasmine, lily, clove, and powder. The species blooms once in spring, at the same time as the lilac Syringa ‘Miss Ellen Wilmot’.
Heavily scented flowers frequently blend the scent of clove with powder and other thick and rich smells. Abelia mosanensis, commonly known as fragrant abelia or Korean abelia, is a deciduous shrub with upright arching stems that grows four- to six-feet-tall and wide. Pink buds open to tubular, pinkish-white flowers in spring. Glossy green foliage turns orange red in fall. The shrub, with its heavy scent, is often sampled by butterflies.
The abelia most people know best is the glossy abelia, a hybrid of A. chinensis and A. uniflora, usually written as Abelia × grandiflora. It is semi-evergreen in the South. Unlike the fragrant abelia, this plant blooms continuously from spring to fall, but I find the fragrance to be light—certainly not as delicious as its cousin’s.
Clerodendrum trichotomum, the harlequin glory-bower, has flowers with the heavy scent of Oriental lilies, powder, and indole. The late summer blossoms burst out of dark pink calyxes.
The flowers of Clerodendrum trichotomum have a spicy smell similar to fragrant abelia and are likewise adored by butterflies and diurnal moths. The genus Clerodendrum is in the mint family and includes herbaceous perennials, woody shrubs, and perennial vines. Among the common names for various species in the genus are glory-bower and bleeding-heart vine. C. trichotomum is called harlequin glory-bower, chance tree, and peanut butter shrub. The leaves, when rubbed, smell not minty but a little skunky, or depending on your imagination, peanut butter.
In planting zone 7 and warmer zones, this plant may become a self-sowing thug in a spot it really loves. This is too bad, because the fruits that hold the seed invaders are as ornamental as the flowers. But, by the time these fruits, blue-black beads set in shiny cerise stars, have formed in early autumn, there is nothing to smell but the funky leaves.
The perennial border in mid-August when garden phlox (Phlox paniculata) fills the air with the scent of powder, tobacco, cucumber, and a touch of vanilla.
NAME:Phlox species (garden phlox, wild sweet William, moss phlox)
The genus Phlox offers several species for gardens. Phlox divaricata is a fine woodland plant with a somewhat powdery, almost lilac or winter jasmine scent. P. maculatum is a lilac-colored eastern species. P. pilosa is the prairie phlox. P. stolonifera, creeping phlox, is one of the low-growing species. P. subulata is the very short moss phlox. There are varieties of all these species and even an annual, P. drummondii, from Texas. Most are fragrant. The scent of P. maculatum is said to be cinnamon and clove. But P. paniculata, the long-blooming garden phlox that fills the air with fragrance for nearly two months, is the essential species.
Garden phlox (hardy in zones 4 to 8) is a US native, ranging from New York west to Iowa and south to Arkansas, Mississippi, and Georgia. Its flowers have a complex aromatic mixture of new-mown hay, tobacco, talcum powder, cucumber, and cedar, with a touch of vanilla and a dusty, earthy cocoa-like smell. The plant likes full sun, but it will grow and bloom in half-day summer sunlight. It wants well-drained soil but will put up with some clay; it likes moisture but tolerates drought. The colors range from white to pink, coral, red, or violet, and there are variegated leaf and bicolor flower versions. Varieties range from two to five feet tall. Bees, butterflies, and moths love the blossoms. Start with one plant, and, you’ll have a good-size clump in a couple of years.
Phlox is susceptible to powdery mildew fungus. To discourage infection, plant where there is good air circulation and seek resistant varieties for your area. I grow the brilliant white, disease-resistant Phlox paniculata ‘David’. It normally grows to about four feet, but some years, in the spring when new shoots are about a foot tall, I cut the plants in half. They branch for more flowers and stay shorter but bloom later. If you have had mildew, however, rather than cutting back for bushier growth, remove one of every four stems to improve air circulation. A tablespoon of baking soda and a teaspoon of lightweight horticultural oil in a gallon of water can be sprayed weekly on mildew-prone plantings. At the end of the season, discard any infected stems and leaves.
To find disease-resistant kinds for your area, look for recommendations from a place nearby or one with a similar climate. For example, the Chicago Botanic Garden and Mt. Cuba Center in Delaware have suggestions, as do the Perennial Pleasures Nursery in Vermont and North Carolina State University.
The woodland or wild blue phlox, Phlox divaricata, is a spring North American native with a winter jasmine scent.
The sweet annual Phlox drummondii ‘Cherry Caramel’ (center) is surrounded by an unusual fragrant tuberous Begonia ‘Scentiment Blush Pink’ and topped by a feathery pale pink astilbe.
Garden phlox, Phlox paniculata, is promiscuous. Plant white and dark pink varieties, and mixed versions will appear from seed. The flowers fill the air with a blend of tobacco, hay, talcum powder, cucumber, cedar, cocoa, vanilla, and earth.
Brunfelsia species, which are called yesterday, today, and tomorrow for the flowers that open violet, fade to lavender, and, finally, turn pure white, smell of winter jasmine, powder, lily, and clove.
NAME:Brunfelsia species and varieties (yesterday, today and tomorrow)
TYPE OF PLANT: tender shrub
PART OF PLANT: winter to spring flowers
PRIMARY SCENT: winter jasmine
SECONDARY SCENTS: powder, lily, gardenia, clove
Brunfelsia species have their origins in the Caribbean and in South America, in the Andes and the Amazon basin. Some of the species’ flowers are salverform, with very long tubes that end in flat, flaring trumpet bells. A nightshade relative in the Solanaceae family, Brunfelsia is toxic if ingested. But, like many of its cousins, it is richly fragrant, especially at night, when moth pollinators come out. The scent is somewhat like winter jasmine, gardenia, lily, and clove.
Most Brunfelsia have flowers that open one color and, over a period of a few days, end up another. They start out violet, then become lavender or spotted, and, finally, fade to pure white. That color change is why B. australis is called the “yesterday, today, and tomorrow” shrub.
Unless you live in the tropics, you can’t grow these plants year-round outdoors. In pots indoors, in all climates, give them as much sunlight and humidity as possible through the winter. A sunroom or cool greenhouse would be a good spot. Don’t let the soil get too dry when the plant is in active growth, however, if the plant is pot-bound and allowed to dry a bit between watering, it will bloom more, from fall to late winter. Summer the potted plants outdoors.
‘Belonica’ is one of the doubleflowered Oriental lilies known as a roselily, with a complex, heavy scent of clove, honey, paperwhite narcissus, indole, baby powder, and grapefruit.
We use the word “lily” to refer to a host of plants: the peace lily, calla lily, daylily, canna lily, and more. But none of these plants is actually in the genus Lilium. True lilies are so well known that other plants have been given descriptive common names based on their lily-like habit and appearances.
Some garden lilies have no scent, but most offer a heavy, deep, and rich perfume. The alluring botanical chemical cocktails we smell are a mixture of VOCs and low-molecular-weight lipophilic (oil- and fat-soluble) liquids. The VOCs include alcohols, aldehydes, ketones, esters, and other miscellaneous hydrocarbons in various combinations.
True lilies are separated into divisions based on their origins, parentages, habits of growth, and flower forms. The most colorful are the Asiatic lilies of division 1. But these Joseph’s-coat blossoms are rarely fragrant.
Division 3 includes the hybrids developed from the species Lilium candidum, with very fragrant early summer trumpet flowers.
Division 5 encompasses hybrids of the Easter lily, L. longiflorum, and the Formosa lily, L. formosanum. They have recurved petals and are very fragrant when in bloom. Division 6 offers summer-blooming Trumpet and Aurelian hybrid flowers on four-to eight-foot stems. They’re especially fragrant after dusk.
Division 7 are the exquisite Oriental hybrids derived from east Asian species such as L. auratum, L. speciosum, and L. japonicum. The flowers are bowl-shaped or flat with petals spread wide open and very fragrant. The so-called roselilies, relatively recent hybrids of Oriental lilies, are assigned to this or the next division. Double-flowered ‘Belonica’ releases a potent blend of clove with burned sugar, indole, honey, vanilla, chocolate, baby powder, wood smoke, and green apples, and with a hint of anise, cat urine, and grapefruit. The scent intensifies beginning around four or five o’clock in the evening and lingers through the night. These lilies are a bit over the top, but, because they are so fragrant and most of them last a long time in the garden or cut, I’ve grown to accept them. They’re useful for cutting because most do not have pollen that could stain a tablecloth, bridal gown, or marble countertop.
Division 8 is composed of other hybrids, including the Oriental trumpet (Orienpet or OT) lilies. ‘Altari’ is a disease-resistant Orienpet that is drought-, heat-, and cold-tolerant.
Some guidebooks list a ninth division, made up of species not in divisions 1 to 8, for instance, L. regale, the regal lily, and the species Easter lily, L. longiflorum. The regal lily bears five to ten huge trumpets—white inside, with yellow throats and subtle garnet coloring on the back. The fragrance is heavy and complex, and stronger after five o’clock; it’s like the scent of most Oriental lilies but with something piquant, perhaps green mango. Another species, the Easter lily is often forced in pots for the holiday but when planted in the garden, flower in midsummer.
When cut lilies are brought indoors, some people can’t abide the heavy scent; I can. It should be noted that lilies are toxic to cats.
In recent times, the scarlet lily beetle has invaded American gardens. My method of control is to handpick these creatures every single day. The invasion seems to taper off in midsummer. Without this diligent observation and elimination, there would be no lily flowers or plants at all, but I’m winning.
‘Altari’ is a tall Oriental trumpet (Orienpet or OT) lily hybrid that has cream petals with a cranberry-red center and is richly fragrant, with a heavy scent much like that of an Oriental lily.
The regal lily, Lilium regale, is a species with garnet-backed glowing white flowers and a fragrance that intensifies in the evening, wafting clove, honey, paperwhite, cat urine, powder, and pungent grapefruit into the air.
There are many types of gardenias: Some have single flowers, others have flowers that look like stars, but most have double flowers with thick, bone-white blossoms. All have the characteristic heavy fragrance.
Gardenias are among the most fragrant of the heavy-scented flowers. Luscious, fleshy bone-white blossoms—usually similar in form to double roses—open from bright green pointed buds on a plant with shiny evergreen leaves. For people who live in southern and western climates, there might be a chance to bask in their scent outdoors. Pluck one to float in a bowl in the kitchen, for the bedside table, or for a corsage.
The fragrance is unmistakable. Describing gardenia’s smell is almost futile: A gardenia smells the way suede feels, the way heavy cream pours. But I’ll conjure a list of comparisons and constituents: jasmine, tuberose, coconut, vanilla, almond, clove, sweet butter, crayons, black pepper, black currant, grass, musk, a touch of cedar, a whisper of patchouli—and indole. But, all together, it’s gardenia.
Gardenia jasminoides thrives in the ground in acidic soil south of Virginia as long as winter temperatures rarely fall below 20°F. The frustration comes from trying to grow these plants indoors. Where I grew up, a gardenia plant lived in a cool, glass-enclosed vestibule at the front door of the Seligmanns’ house across the street, and thrived for years. There was warmth but no direct drying heat to lower relative humidity. There was some afternoon sunlight, and bright light all day.
If you hope to challenge nature, here’s how to do it: Try not to move the plant once you’ve found the best spot. Night temperatures should be between 55°F and 60°F. Avoid drafts. Relative humidity must be above 50 percent. The soil should be moist but never soggy; it should be cool to the touch but not stain your finger. From March to September, feed once a month with a half-strength dilution of a balanced organic or acidic fertilizer. Summer the plant outside in half-day sunlight after the last and before the first frost dates.
Prune off faded flowers and any dead wood. Or buy a plant and think of it as cut flowers (or build a nice cool greenhouse, or move to Georgia).
Gardenia shrubs can live year-round in the South but must be indoors in cold climates. The scent can be described as a blend of winter jasmine, coconut, vanilla, clove, black pepper, patchouli, and indole.
Like many heavy-scented flowers, Brugmansia, or angel’s-trumpet, including this yellow B. suaveolens hybrid, is a member of the nightshade family, poisonous and fragrant at night.
Brugmansia is a nightshade, along with the similar Datura (discussed next). Both have trumpet flowers that smell at night. The huge blossoms of Brugmansia, called angel’s-trumpet, hang down from a large shrub or small tree. The poisonous flowers, seeds, leaves, and stems contain tropane alkaloids such as scopolamine, hyoscyamine, and atropine.
There is a story that some Brugmansia bloom with the full moon, and others with the darkness of the new moon. I don’t know about that, but I have noticed that flowering seems to come in waves—buds followed by blossoms followed by a quiet time until the process starts again.
In general, these woody plants won’t bloom until they have at least one Y branch. There are also two sections of the genus: Some species need cool nights to flower, others warm nights to initiate bud formation. The cold group is known as Sphaerocarpium, and includes the species arborea, × rubella, sanguinea, and vulcanicola. The warm group, known simply as Brugmansia, includes B. aurea, × candida, insignis, suaveolens, and versicolor. People who live in climates where these plants can be grown outdoors year-round (zones 9 and 10) are often enthusiastic about collecting and even breeding their own.
Trumpet colors are white, yellow, peach, and apricot orange, as well as ombré blends. The fragrances range from citrus to clove and wintergreen. I met one variegated variety that smelled exactly like yellow cake. Brugmansia suaveolens flowers smell of narcissus and lily. My friends Mara Seibert and Lenore Rice (their eponymous firm imports handmade terra-cotta pots) swear their white B. × candida smells lemony. Plant expert Noel Gieleghem had a ‘Shredded White’ as tall as his house when he lived in Napa, California; he agrees that the smell is citrusy, and adds that the popular soft orange variety ‘Charles Grimaldi’ smells best.
Some Brugmansia hybrid flowers have a wintergreen or vanilla scent, but many others, like the white B. × candida, smell lemony or generally like citrus.
The familiar jimsonweed, locoweed, or thorn apple, also called devil’s trumpet, is another deadly nightshade. Although frost-tender, plants appear and bloom in one season from seeds in cold climates.
NAME:Datura species (devil’s trumpet)
TYPE OF PLANT: annual
PART OF PLANT: summer to fall flowers
PRIMARY SCENT: paperwhite narcissus
SECONDARY SCENTS: by species, lemon-cream, lily, clove, powder, rose, spicy, wintergreen, rose, some rank
Like Brugmansia, Datura species (called devil’s trumpet, moonflower, jimsonweed, and thorn apple) are poisonous members of the nightshade family. Unlike the downward-facing Brugmansia, however, Datura flowers point up, like chalices.
An herbaceous annual or tender short-lived perennial, Datura is usually grown from seed. Some can grow as large as four feet by four feet in one season. When bruised, the foliage smells skunky. The flowers unfurl at dusk and remain open all night and into the morning, until they wilt. While open, most have heavy lily-like, clove-with-powder scents, although I’ve heard some described as spicy, rose with peony, or citrusy.
There are a half dozen species and several varieties. Datura inoxia has white flowers and likes poor, dry soil. If the site stays moist and is rich with organic matter, leaves will grow at the expense of flowers. Once happy, the plant may self-sow and become weedy. D. stramonium is native to North America and is much like D. inoxia, except the flowers are smaller. D. meteloides produces four-inch-wide flowers on eight-inch-long tubes, with twisty tails protruding from the five petals. They are pollinated by the long-tongued hawk moth.
D. metel trumpets may be single or double and come in a variety of colors, including white, yellow, magenta, and dark purple. The double versions look as if they were dipped in meringue.
Brugmansia flowers hang downward. Those of their cousins the Datura point outward or upward. There are a few Datura species. Fragrances range from lily to wintergreen, or somewhat stinky but also like lemon cream.
HERBAL/GREEN
Herbaceous smells are green smells. The smell of soft growth. Green notes in perfume are described as fresh, vegetal, crisp, and lively. Imagine a juicy stem being snapped. In French perfumery, the green category of smells is called fougère, the word for “fern.”
When you read “herbal/green” here, don’t think just of plants for flavors. Think of the fragrances of lawn grass, green peas, new-mown hay—of chlorophyll, from the Greek chloros (green) and phyllon (leaf).
The herbaceous annuals or perennials of the world are the non-woody plants with soft tissues. The short version of the word “herbaceous” is “herb.” But when we hear “herbs,” we think of culinary plants known for their flavors. Here, we’re investigating the herbaceous plants mostly for their fragrances.
Galium odoratum, sweet woodruff or sweet-scented bedstraw, with tiny white flowers and starlike leaves, is the small ground cover in this woodland mix.
Erysimum cheiri ‘Apricot’ is a wallflower that smells mostly like violets with honey, herbal/green, and anise, along with light jasmine and orange blossom.
For example, sweet woodruff, Galium odoratum, an aggressive spreading herbaceous ground cover for shade, is also called scented bedstraw. It is usually said to smell like new-mown hay. I also detect a bit of raisin. The potency increases with drying, and dried leaves are used in sachets and potpourri, and as a flavoring for May wine, traditionally served to celebrate May Day.
Valerian, Valeriana officinalis, is not a culinary herb but a mysterious plant known for the healing properties of its leaves, stems, and roots. All the parts are fragrant. Ellen thought it smelled like celery, perhaps because she was handling cut stems, or was just too close. The flowers’ sweet aroma, which lends the plant its other common name, garden heliotrope, is best sampled on the breeze. From a distance, the flowers smell like vanilla (with a touch of spice). Up close, a hint of locker room. Colorful Centranthus ruber, called red valerian, isn’t related. If grown in dry, infertile soil, it has a honey scent.
Valerian’s celery scent isn’t too far from the aroma of anise, another smell common in herbaceous plants, such as fennel, dill leaves, anise hyssop, and Pimpinella. In wallflowers, Erysimum cheiri syn. Cherianthus cheiri, ubiquitous biennials in Britain, there’s a hint of anise behind the smell of voilets.
I’ve placed scented geraniums, too, in the herbal/green category. These plants are not in the genus Geranium but in Pelargonium, and include the hothouse or windowbox plants with fire engine–red flowers and pungent leaves. The scented pelargoniums mimic the smells of other things: apple, coconut, nutmeg, lemon, rose, and the like. They all have a green background and, like other fragrant herbs, must be bruised for the leaves to release their redolence.
I considered including mints in this category because their tissues are herbaceous/green—and some have culinary uses. But others have strong, biting odors, so I’m relegating them to the medicinal category. Although spearmint and wintergreen are softer and sweeter, they are going to join the mints with peppery, piercing odors.
The blue flowers and leaves of borage (Borago officinalis) taste like cucumber. Colorful nasturtium (Tropaeolum majus) smell peppery. “Nasturtium” comes from nasus tortus, Latin for “twisted nose.” The white flowers are from the key lime tree.
Clockwise from top left: Licorice-scented plants: Florence fennel (Foeniculum vulgare); purple anise hyssop (Agastache foeniculum); narrow-leafed Mexican tarragon (Tagetes lucida); greater burnet (pink Pimpinella major ‘Rosea’); grassy Acorus gramineus ‘Licorice’; basil; and the fruit of star anise (Illicium verum).
HERBAL/GREEN PLANTS
Plants known as umbellifers have “umbels,” clusters of many tiny flowers on short stalks that form an umbrella shape.
NAME:Pimpinella and Foeniculum species (anise and fennel)
TYPE OF PLANT: herbaceous biennials, perennials
PART OF PLANT: stems, leaves, flowers
PRIMARY SCENT: anise
SECONDARY SCENTS: celery, licorice, green
We’re all familiar with licorice, a flavoring usually extracted from the root of an herbaceous perennial, Glycyrrhiza glabra, native to southern Europe and southern Asia. A similar essence comes from the fruit and seeds of star anise, a shrub in the genus Illicium. The natural additive for licorice these days is often made from plants in the genus Pimpinella. Anise seeds, for example, come from P. anisum, a plant not to be confused with star anise.
Pimpinella is in the Apiaceae family, also known as the Umbelliferae, with thirty-seven hundred species, including such famous members as celery, carrot, parsley, fennel, sweet cicely, and chervil. The inflorescences of these plants are in umbels, like flower-studded umbrellas. The fine, feathery foliage of many, such as dill and fennel, has the licorice aroma.
Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) originally came from the Mediterranean but, in the United States, has escaped to become naturalized in many areas, especially coastal California. I support picking the yellow flowers and flavorful seeds to stop the plants from spreading. A variety called Florence fennel or finocchio forms the anise-flavored bulbous base used as a vegetable.
Osmorhiza claytonii is Clayton’s sweetroot, also called bland sweet cicely. It is a US native, as is Osmorhiza longistylis, smooth sweet cicely, with leaves and roots scented much like star anise. Actual sweet cicely is Myrrhis odorata, a European perennial that has pinnate soft and hairy leaves like a fern’s. David Austin’s myrrh-scented roses are named for this herb.
Another, completely different plant in my garden surprises with its particular smell; it looks like yellow-green grass. The variety of Acorus gramineus, a plant of the water’s edge called sweet flag, is aptly named ‘Licorice’. Pick one of the ten-inch-long blades, tear it in half, and bring it up to your nose to get the sweetest, clearest smell.
Pimpinella anisum is the source of the anise seeds that produce licorice flavor. Some species have fragrant foliage, and there are also ornamental garden flowers, like frothy pink P. major ‘Rosea’.
Agastache ‘Apache Sunset’ (licorice mint hyssop), whose leaves are minty, with a touch of anise, in front of Salvia ‘Cienega De Oro’, whose leaves, when rubbed, smell a little like rosemary.
NAME:Agastache species and varieties (anise hyssop)
TYPE OF PLANT: herbaceous perennials
PART OF PLANT: summer flowers, leaves
PRIMARY SCENT: anise
SECONDARY SCENTS: licorice, mint, root beer
Another group of plants with the aroma of licorice is the hyssops—mint-family natives and exotics that have become popular ornamentals in recent years. One I grow is the indigenous anise hyssop, Agastache foeniculum. Bees love its flowers.
The dozens of dense flower stalks—racemes covered with tiny violet flowers—are held above slightly hairy green leaves. Pull a couple of tiny florets from the fluffy spike and chew them. Their licorice flavor is strong and sweet.
I don’t have trouble growing this plant, but I haven’t been all that successful with similar ones, like the striking variety with bright chartreuse foliage called ‘Golden Jubilee’. I’ve also failed, here in my humid valley, with the incredible hyssops that grow mostly at high elevations in the western United States. These need excellent drainage, plenty of sun, and moving air. A. rupestris, licorice mint hyssop, has inch-long florets, colored orange or coral, that emerge from lavender or russet calyxes, depending on the variety. The foliage is slender and silvery—these are evolutionary adaptations to conserve moisture in windy, droughtprone regions.
A. cana, hummingbird mint or double-bubble mint, bears dark pink flowers, and every part of it smells of licorice. This plant is native to New Mexico and western Texas at elevations above six thousand feet. Leave the current year’s stems standing until the following spring, then cut them down to about six inches before new growth begins.
Don’t fret if you’ve failed to get these smashing plants to behave like perennials. Just do your best to provide what they need, or move to Colorado for exceptional drainage and a guaranteed two-foot cover of snow.
The purple spires of Agastache ‘Blue Fountain’. The foliage, when crushed, smells like anise. Chew a few flowers for an intense, sweet licorice flavor.
Agastache (hyssop) hybrids include dark purple ‘Blue Boa’, peachy ‘Kudos Yellow’, and red ‘Kudos Coral’. Agastache ‘Golden Jubilee’ has chartreuse foliage.
The old reliable Lavender ‘Hidcote’, named for the renowned English garden, in a wide swath at Well Sweep Herb Farm, a mail-order nursery in New Jersey that also has gardens open to the public.
Feather-topped L. stoechas has a bit of an identity crisis, as it is commonly called “Italian,” “French,” or “Spanish” lavender. This frost-sensitive variety and English lavender, L. angustifolia, yield highquality oil, although the profitable hybrid lavandin, L. × intermedia, has larger flowers.
NAME:Lavandula varieties (lavender)
TYPE OF PLANT: perennial sub-shrub
PART OF PLANT: spring to summer flowers, stems, and leaves
PRIMARY SCENT: herbal
SECONDARY SCENTS: piney, fruity, floral, camphor, piquant, laundry on the line
To what category does lavender belong? It is in the mint family, but is the scent strong enough to be considered medicinal? Or is it balsamic, or fruity? Plants are somewhat woody, like shrubs, but also have soft parts. As an herb, lavender is medicinal and culinary, and grown mostly for its fragrance. Technically, it is a low-growing sub-shrub.
Lavender can be used in perfume, to scent soap, to flavor ice cream, cookies, and crackers, or, when placed in a drawer or on a shelf in the linen closet, as a deodorizer. The leaves, stems, and flowers are fragrant, the gray-green foliage more so than the small flowers that line wands held above it. The smell is a little piney and piquant, but also lightly fruity.
Lavandula flowers are so well known that the plant shares its common name with a color. The source of most varieties is L. angustifolia, English lavender. Like “English boxwood” (a plant that probably originated at the crossroads of western Europe and eastern Asia), “English lavender” is a misnomer: This lavender comes from the Mediterranean. English lavender is so called because it was able to tolerate Britain’s moist climate. The best-known garden cultivar is ‘Hidcote’, named for the famous English garden. There are dwarf varieties and ones with white or pink, light or dark violet flowers. ‘Silver Frost’ has brighter foliage.
Other cold-hardy kinds worth noting are versions of the hybrid Lavandula × intermedia, crosses of L. angustifolia and L. latifolia. A popular example is called ‘Grosso’. Lloyd Traven of Peace Tree Nursery recently introduced ‘Phenomenal’, and it is worthy of its name. This tall and wide hybrid is very hardy and happy in planting zones 5 to 9.
Less hardy species include L. dentata (French lavender), L. stoechas (Spanish lavender), and L. multifida (French lace). The distinctive inflorescences of each lavender species are different. And instead of small, flower-covered wands, L. stoechas has plump drumsticks topped by bunches of bracts from which a succession of feathery flowers emerge.
Lavandula all need full sun and very good air circulation. They want excellent drainage and must never sit in water. The soil should also be nutritionally lean and alkaline.
Grab a cluster of Comptonia peregrina leaves and thread them through your gently closed fist. Smell your palm and see if you detect lavender, hay, balsam fir, and, maybe, raisin.
The leaf of a sweet fern is described, scientifically, as “pubescent, linear-oblong, and pinnatifid with rounded-ovate, oblique mucronulate lobes.” In other words, the slender felted leaves have notched edges. The shape looks like a frond, and that’s the origin of part of the plant’s common name. The fragrance of the Comptonia peregrina leaf when baking in a sunny meadow or rubbed accounts for the “sweet” part of the name: The scent is a soft woodsy blend of lavender, herbal/green, and hay.
Sweet fern grows easily where it is already growing, but it is difficult to transplant and establish. Comptonia wants acidic soil, something I do not have. If you have some sweet fern you’d like to move, rather than only digging down, scrape it up as if it were deeply rooted sod and move it to a new location with well-draining, acidic soil.
Comptonia is called sweet fern because of the fragrance of the leaves and the feathery foliage, but it is not a fern. As can be seen here, the woody sub-shrub forms spiky fruits.
NAME:Dennstaedtia punctilobula (hay-scented fern)
TYPE OF PLANT: fern
PART OF PLANT: leaves
PRIMARY SCENT: hay
SECONDARY SCENTS: green, grass
The hay-scented fern is an herbaceous plant, dying to the ground in winter. And, like the sweet fern, it prefers to grow in sunny open spaces in thin, acidic soil. It will also grow in some shade and in neutral soil. The fronds look as if they are light green feathers stuck in the ground, in colonies that may become vast. They turn golden brown in fall.
Dennstaedtia punctilobula gets its common name from the smell of the fronds when brushed, bruised, or crushed—when fresh and even more so when dried. In the nineteenth century, Henry David Thoreau wrote about this fern in his journal: “When I wade through my narrow cow-paths it is as if I had strayed into an ancient and decayed herb garden. Nature perfumes her garments with this essence now especially. The very scent of it, if you have a decayed frond in your chamber, will take you far up country in a twinkling.”
The hay-scented fern is a true fern, and smells especially when the fronds are dried. Unlike ferns of the moist, shaded woodland, this variety likes sun and grows in dry meadows alongside sweet fern.
Marigolds come in a wide variety of forms and heights (from six to thirty-six inches). Clockwise from top right: Tagetes ‘Disco Single Orange’, ‘Tall Orange’, ‘Tall Yellow’, ‘Lemon Star’, and ‘Cream’.
I really don’t understand why so many people dislike the smell of marigolds. The fragrance of the leaves is green, fresh, perhaps acrid, chrysanthemum-like, with a bit of lime—but stinky? I think the leaves and flowers smell fresh and clean.
The three kinds of ornamental flowering marigold are called African, French, and signet. The tall ones with large flowers are African (Tagetes erecta). The shorter, mound-forming ones with frilly colorful double flowers are French (T. patula). And the short ones covered with little flowers are the signet types (T. tenuifolia), known as “gems,” and are said to be citrus-scented.
Marigolds aren’t African or French. They originated in Mexico, Central America, and southern Arizona, but have naturalized in parts of Africa and are revered in India.
But there’s more. T. nelsonii is tangerine-scented and T. lemmonii is citrus-scented, with delightfully fragrant foliage. These two- to three-foot-tall bushy tender perennials have feathery leaves, and, if brushed or touched, they give off a delightful scent that stays on your fingers.
The most impressive marigold for leaf fragrance is the handsome evergreen perennial T. lucida, Mexican tarragon. The leaves have the rich, vivid fragrance and the light taste of sweet anise. It is grown as an annual in cold climates but can be carried over in a cool sunny spot indoors, and cut back in spring.
The name marigold comes from “Mary’s gold”—a reference to the crown of the Virgin Mary. Shakespeare knew the marigold and wrote of it in A Winter’s Tale, but such early evocations refer not to Tagetes but to the near-look-alike flowers of the edible and medicinal herb Calendula, or pot marigold. Calendula’s flowers have been described as “sweet,” but they have a resin-like, woody smell of new-mown hay. The petals have been used for flavoring and coloring, and are sometimes called “poor man’s saffron.”
Calendula, pot marigold, is a culinary herb with a hay-like scent. (Its petals are called poor man’s saffron.) The name “marigold” came from the crown of the Virgin Mary, “Mary’s gold.”
Teucrium chamaedrys (germander); Origanum marjoricum ‘Hardy Sweet’; O. vulgare ‘Variegated’; O. microphyllum; O. vulgare; O. ‘Kent Beauty’.
Although I’ve put mints in the medicinal section, there are mint cousins here among the herbal/greens—oregano, for instance, with its square stems and fragrant foliage. The genus Origanum includes hardy and tender herbaceous or semi-woody perennials. Oregano, marjoram, and sweet marjoram leaves are fragrant when rubbed. The smells may be faint or potent green, minty, thyme-like—or what we recognize as Italian seasoning.
The common Origanum vulgare grows in my garden. It looks like a wildflower when in bloom, with rosy blossoms lasting well over a month. O. vulgare var. hirtum is true oregano, the Greek or Italian herb grown for cooking. ‘Aureum’ has gold foliage.
O. marjorana, sweet marjoram, is a tender species grown as an annual.
Dittany of Crete (O. dictamnus) is mostly an ornamental perennial hardy in zones 7 to 10, but it’s often grown in pots or on a retaining wall, so that its overlapping flower bracts cascading from the ends of wiry stems can droop over the container’s rim or the wall’s edge. The pale green blushed-pink bracts look like hops. Similar are O. libanoticum, a native of Lebanon, and ‘Kent Beauty’ (O. rotundifolium × O. scabrum)—allegedly hardier but best enjoyed for a single season.
There are a few oregano smell-alikes: Mexican oregano, Lippia graveolens; Cuban or Spanish oregano, Plectranthus amboinicus; and Mexican bush oregano or Mexican sage, Poliomintha longiflora, with aromatic edible flowers.
Hardy O. vulgare, wild oregano, is the plant that is the source of the flavorful leaves. (Vulgare means “common.”) The herb blooms for a long time in summer and is easy to grow.
Lemon thyme is a citrus-scented species of the fragrant and flavorful herb. The Thymus × citriodorus ‘Variegata’ version of the wiry sub-shrub has yellow-green foliage edged in cream.
NAME:Thymus species and varieties (thyme)
TYPE OF PLANT: herb, sub-shrub, ground cover
PART OF PLANT: stems, leaves
PRIMARY SCENT: strong green
SECONDARY SCENTS: marjoram, savory herbal, sage, lemon, mint, medicinal, pine
Thyme doesn’t just come dry for turkey stuffing. These low rock and herb garden plants or sub-shrubs have fragrant foliage and colorful flowers. Some species and varieties grow in flat, mosslike patches; others tower at seven inches. They vary in their amounts of scent and a few are mimics—lemon, mint, caraway, pineapple, or even coconut. In hot sun or when the foliage is brushed, most of the species smell sweet, warm, and green, with a faintly spicy and medicinal odor that is a match for their biting but not bitter flavor.
Selections and hybrids with colorful blossoms from white (‘Snow Drift’) to dark pink (‘David Baird’) are available. There are a few with attractive foliage. Woolly thyme, a gray-green fuzzy spreading mat, needs perfect drainage. Easier to grow is Thymus × citriodorus ‘Aureus’, the six-inch-tall fragrant variegated lemon thyme, and plants in the coccineus group known as wild thymes.
All thyme plants flower, and many, for instance, ‘David Baird’, make quite ornamental ground covers. These plants are scented with hints of oregano, sage, mint, and a little pine.
Monarda, bee balm, Oswego tea, bergamot—by any name, these plants, in a wide variety of species and colors, have fragrant foliage that is a blend of oregano, mint, rose, and citrus.
NAME:Monarda species (bergamot, bee balm, Oswego tea)
Monarda species are known, variously, as Oswego tea, bergamot, and bee balm. Oswego tea is named for a drink made from its leaves by the Oswego Native Americans of New York State. The American colonists brewed a decoction by steeping the leaves, as a black tea substitute, in boiling water. Leaves can also be added to salads, and the flowers make a colorful garnish. The flavor is minty and spicy, the scent a blend of lemon, orange, rose, and oregano. The name bergamot refers to a similarly scented fruit, Citrus bergamia, a greenish-yellow orange whose oil is used in perfume and to flavor Earl Grey tea.
Although Monarda is a favorite of pollinators—hummingbirds and bumblebees and, especially, butterflies—the name “bee balm” refers to the old medicinal use of the juice of squeezed leaves to soothe stings.
The common roadside species in my area is Monarda fistulosa, which is covered with pink flowers in midsummer. The most familiar ornamentals are varieties of M. didyma. The flowers are lightly fragrant, but the leaves, gently rubbed, are strongly scented. Softly felted, serrated, spear-shaped Monarda leaves cover stems that rise two to four feet before they are crowned by the flower heads. There are short and tall varieties, including the bright, compact ‘Petite Delight’ and the unbeatable red ‘Jacob Kline’.
M. citriodora is lemon mint. M. bradburiana is eastern bee balm. M. punctata is dotted bee balm or horsemint, a humble, shaggy but lovely native species.
Among the sixteen Mondarda species, the red-flowered M. didyma has contributed to an astonishing range of vivid hybrids, such as this one, ‘Gardenview Scarlet’, which blooms from midsummer to early fall.
There are several small-leaved scented geraniums, Pelargonium, such as the variegated yellow and green lemon-scented ‘Cy’s Sunburst’.
NAME:Pelargonium species and varieties (scented geranium)
TYPE OF PLANT: tender evergreen perennial
PART OF PLANT: year-round leaves
PRIMARY SCENT: herbal
SECONDARY SCENTS: by variety, minty, rose, pungent, medicinal, lemon, fruit and spice
I first went to Logee’s Greenhouses in Danielson, Connecticut, when I was a teenager. I can honestly say it changed, or at least directed, my life. Because I have always been attracted to fragrance, it was love at first smell when I met the scented geraniums that mimicked the aromas of dozens of different fruits and spices. The red hothouse geranium that Thomas Jefferson grew at Monticello (Pelargonium fulgidum hybrid) is similar to today’s zonal bedding plants. Rub those leaves and you get a pungent, oily, acrid smell.
These plants are called geraniums for their resemblance to the hardy perennial, but they are actually Pelargonium, in the same Geraniaceae family. P. triste was brought by the Dutch from South Africa to the botanical garden in Leiden around 1631. English explorers came upon the plants at South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope and, in 1795, exported some to England. They were instant sensations. P. capitatum, the rose-scented geranium, was put into duty as an adulterant for rose oil in perfumes.
As a kid, I was wild for these upright or sprawling tender perennial sub-shrubs with leaves that might smell (with a little imagination) like gooseberries, nutmeg, coconut, mint, lemon, rose, apricot, apple, ginger, lime, orange, strawberry, peppermint, and more. In the background of these flavorful fragrances, there is often a bit of a pungent herbal/green. There are more than 120 chemical compounds in the fragrant leaf oils.
The leaves have widely varied shapes. They may be as small as a thumbnail or similar in size and form to grape leaves. Some are hard and skeletal; others are soft and fuzzy or curly with crisp edges.
Pelargoniums are easy to grow outdoors in the summer months, either in the ground or in containers. Clay pots are best, since moisture can transpire through the porous material. Indoors is more challenging. These plants need a lot of sunlight, or at least to be grown under florescent or LED tubes, but they may get leggy from the warmth of the lights and require pruning.
Some that might lend themselves to success as houseplants are P. odorantissimum (apple), P. citronellum (syn. ‘Mabel Gray’, lemon), P. tomentosum (peppermint), P. capitatum (rose), P. ‘Attar of Roses’, ‘Candy Dancer’ (lemon rose), ‘Colcoho’ (rose), ‘Frensham’ (citrus lemon), ‘Ginger’, ‘Logee’s Snowflake’ (rose), ‘Rober’s Lemon Rose’, ‘Round Leaf Rose’, and ‘Shrubland Rose’ (sweet pine).
The small-leaf kinds, for example, the variegated lemon-scented types, are challenging in the home and best grown in a cool greenhouse. These include the famous, hyper-lemonscented variegated green and cream-white variety P. crispum ‘Prince Rupert’ and new versions, such as ‘Cy’s Sunburst.’
Variegated gray-green mint rose Pelargonium ‘Lady Plymouth’; P. ‘Apricot’; strawberry-scented P. × scarboroviae; P. ‘Nutmeg’; velvety peppermint P. tomentosum; fruity ‘Pink Capricorn’.
HONEY
Among the earliest shrubs in the garden, and one that blooms for a very long time, is the flowering quince (Chaemomeles japonica). I can barely detect a scent, but that might be because the air is so cold. I’m told the smell is honey and fruit tart. That smell of honey is common in the plant world. With the honey-scented flowers, there are positive things to celebrate and also things to watch out for. We may have to take the good with the not so good, or skip some flowers altogether.
Many native North American plants have honey-scented flowers. Itea virginica, Virginia sweetspire, is an easy-to-grow attractive native deciduous shrub with long racemes covered with nicely honey-scented white flowers in mid- to late June.
Although not a native, evergreen Prunus laurocerasus, the cherry laurel, is a shrubby cousin of the peach and plum fruit trees, in the rose family, that fills the air with the richest honey fragrance. In May, and sporadically throughout the summer, it displays upright floral candles studded with an abundance of pearly buds that open to starry flowers above dark, glossy foliage.
Tropical and subtropical honey plants include Melianthus major, the honeybush. Its common name refers to the large flower spike covered with dark red flowers that produces so much nectar for its bird pollinators that it pours out to cover the leaves. Those ornamental leaves have made this a popular “temperennial” for seasonal beds and container plantings. The large, divided leaves are glaucous—coated with a bloom like an Italian plum’s, making them appear blue green. If rubbed, they smell like peanut butter. Global warming has Britains growing this plant in the ground.
Honey bell, Hermannia verticillata, is a member of the mallow family, which includes hibiscus and cotton. This plant makes an impressive subject for a hanging basket in a cool greenhouse or sun porch, as long as nighttime temperatures are allowed to dip to 50°F. In late winter to early spring, honey bell is smothered in small, bell-shaped yellow blossoms that will easily scent a room. The fragrance is not heavy or sticky; to some, it is reminiscent of jonquils.
After looking up at trees like the red horsechestnut, shrubs, and hanging baskets, consider looking down toward a familiar lilliputian annual—sweet alyssum (Lobularia maritima), with its rich honey fragrance so intense that it can drift up to the nose of a basketball pro. In spring, the tufts of tiny flowers in white, pink, or lilac completely cover the plants. Most sweet alyssum selections stop blooming once the weather warms, but a few continue. Plants are often placed along the edges of paved paths. There are variegated versions such as ‘Frosty Night’ and the exquisite ‘Primavera Princess’. The latter has a honey smell mixed with new-mown hay and, after a rain, a touch of lemon.
The potential downside with some honey-scented plants is that their flowers, especially up close, don’t smell very good. Plants like privet smell like honey, but also like ammonia and bleach and—thanks to the chemical trimethylamine, which is also found in fish brine—putrefaction, vomit, and semen. Bees and other insects love it.
But privet probably shouldn’t be grown at all. It makes a hedge up to eight feet tall, and that’s why people plant it. But you’ll have to keep up with pruning or shearing, because your hedge will produce fruits and seeds that birds love and will spread far and wide.
Many rose relatives have the same unpleasant smell, for example, American hawthorn, chokeberry, cotoneaster, and pyracantha. Spring Viburnum shrubs have fantastically fragrant flowers, but the summer-flowering kinds have a bleachy, fishy, rank odor that is more animalic than honey.
Honey-scented North American native shrub Itea virginica, Virginia sweetspire.
When in flower, the tall spike of honeybush, Melianthus major, a popular tender perennial for summer containers, will drip with sweet nectar. The leaves smell like peanut butter.
Sweet alyssum, Lobularia maritima, is a diminutive ground cover with an intense honey scent, a touch of new-mown hay and vanilla, and sometimes lemon after a rain.
