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It's not your imagination: most commercial
roses smell less. Lavender-colored roses are the exception for now.
The lack of smell in roses is the outcome of a push for long-lasting,
brightly colored roses.
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One of the reasons roses are smelling less
sweet is that breeders are focused on 26 traits, none of them smell.
According to breeder John Dolan, "roses per bush, vase life,
color, form, thorns" are all more important commercial characteristics.
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Since making scent demands a lot of metabolic
energy from a flower, long-lasting flowers might be taking energy
away from their scent making.
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Flowers smells are plant survival traits.
Terpenes, the chemical compounds that make basil and juniper smell
the way they do, discourage herbivores from eating the stems of the
plants, while attracting pollinators to their flowers. Citrusy limonene
is the terpene that gives lavender its scent-it's also an antibacterial
agent.
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If you want flowers that smell, you're better
off sticking to growing your own blooms.
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Snapdragons have very simple smell mechanisms--only
three components contribute to their scent, just compare that to an
orchid's one hundred components.
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The way each flower in a variety has its own
smell is by changing the proportion of its odor components, thought
the number of components will be shared by the variety.
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The compound indol in strong concentration
smells like sewage, but its low concentration is "a key component
of jasmine." Many of the worst smells we experience as humans
can be pleasant in very low concentrations.
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The way a flower smells changes over its lifespan-scents
are produced and then fade at different rates over the days the flower
is blooming.
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University professors are trying to isolate
the genes that contribute to flowers smelling like flowers, so flower
growers can reintroduce the genes, there's also the possibility that
they will give scent to odorless blooms, or offer the possibility
of new smells for familiar flowers.
Source:
Written and researched by Sylvie Beauvais, Philadelphia, PA
Adapted from Jonathan Knight, "Aroma therapy." New Scientist,
February 12, 2000.
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