Stop and Smell the Roses

They say you should stop and smell the roses. But I can’t smell them anymore. No, old age hasn’t removed my sense of smell. I smell the litter box and those hanging pine tree car fresheners just fine. It’s hybridization. The roses that once had a delicate sweet perfume are no more fragrant than a blade of grass. The spicy aroma of carnations – gone.

Roses at the grocery store lack fragrance

While I still love the beauty of a bouquet of roses, I’m saddened when I sniff them. My brain still longs for the sweet smells of yore. Smelling those flowers calmed me and took me back to Grandma’s rose garden.

It’s not my just imagination, either. According to Anna Zverkova, The Smell of Roses, Around 20% of all roses don’t smell of anything.’ (1)

What happened to the fragrance? With hybridization, roses grown for cutting are bred to be strong enough for travel. Commercial rose breeders prioritize the roses’ strength, beauty, and vase life over their fragrance. The fragrance of roses has been neglected and is often overlooked. Many rose varieties developed for the cut flower market no longer possess any scent at all. (2) I just hope they saved the seeds of the fragrant roses in the Global Seed Vault in Spitsbergen, Norway so future generations might know that wonderful scent.

When I asked my brother-in-law, Ken, why roses don’t smell he said, “Because you buy grocery store roses. Most of them are grown in Holland and were cut weeks before they appear in the store. They’ve been in coolers all that time. And they’re bred to last, not to smell. We have roses that smell like roses!” He should know. His business is one of the top 100 florists in the US.

So that’s it, I buy the cheap stuff. I’m buying dime store cologne and expecting Chanel No. 5 fragrance. I have to pay for that smell.

It’s not only roses that lost their scent. Carnations have also lost their spicy scent. I sniffed the carnations given to ladies at our Mother’s Day Buffet. No scent. I remember the strong clove aroma. When I was in high school, girls wanted orchid corsages because they cost more, but I still liked carnations. The orchids didn’t smell.

Ken reminded me that those carnations “were cheap, bulk carnations. Come to my store and smell the moon series carnations, they smell sweet like lilies with a hint of lemon.” But you have to like lavender or purple, the color of moon carnations. It’s a good thing I do.

Bridesmaid’s bouquet from niece’s wedding - roses, peonies & thistle

But Ken’s store is over 1,000 miles away; Google Maps estimates 99 hours by bike and 15 days if I walked. Doesn’t Google realize I have a car?

There are still flowers that emit a wonderful scent. Garden peonies (do you say pee-own-nee or pee-an-nee?) still smell sweet, more powerful than roses yet softer than gardenias. But if you expect that wonderful fragrance in your cut flower bouquet, forget it. I sniffed the peony at the grocery store flower counter – no smell.

Grocery store Peonies also lack fragrance

When I need to smell a fragrant flower, I can go outside. Our building has a gardenia tree. The gardenia flowers are also loaded with ants, and the cut flower does not last long, but at least I can bring back the bliss of sniffing a flower.

Gardenia in the garden still has a wonderful fragrance

I wish this blog could present you with the sweet aroma of roses, the spicy fragrance of carnations, and the heavy sweet smell of peonies or gardenias. I wish it could be like Smell-O-Vision, a fizzled technique of emitting smells during play or movie performances. (5) As a second best, watch Everything’s Coming up Roses, the CBS New Sunday Morning video of the roses at New York’s Botanical Garden. Or maybe visit your florist. I know a great one in Evansville, Indiana! (6)

Epilogue

I joked about going 1,000 miles to visit my brother-in-law's and sister's flower shop. I'm actually in Evansville this weekend for their daughter's wedding. I'm surrounded by the beautiful flowers they provided. Most of them have no scent. They are amazing though. Hybridization has brought us amazing color variety and beauty. The flowers at the wedding included deep purple scabiosa, roses, and carnations.

I'll have to go to Ken's store to for the smell. That reminds me of the song Big Yellow Taxi - "They took all the trees and put them in a tree museum, and charged all the people a dollar and a half just to see them." only change the lyrics to: They took all the scented roses and put them in a flower museum, and charged all the people a dollar and a half just to smell them. Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you got 'til it's gone?

Note: I started writing this week's blog weeks before I realized I'd publish it the day after the wedding. Serendipity at work!

Cheyanna & Lacey - flowers by Zeidler's Florist

The Science Behind the Scent (2)

For those of you who want more information about the science behind the rose scent:

Roses produce their sweet aroma with a gene that ‘switches on’ the scent. This gene ‘switches on’ a crucial enzyme called RhNUDX1. The chemical acts in the cells of the rose’s petals to generate a chemical called monoterpene geraniol, one of the sweetest-smelling parts of the highly coveted, and very expensive rose oil. Scientists have discovered that roses that have been bred for durability and their looks have lost their scent because this scent gene is removed.

Wild roses still have a scent. They could not survive without their scent, as it attracts bees to pollinate its flower. In cultivated roses, the scent has no reproductive function, it’s only for our pleasure.

References

1. Anna Zverkova, Rose Fragrance, The Smell of Roses.

2. The Demise of Scented Roses, The Real Flower Company.

3. Jennifer Duggan, Inside the ‘Doomsday Vault’. Time.com

4. The Editors, Ants on Peony Flowers: An Enduring Myth, almanac.com, June 2, 2022.

5. Smell-o-vision, Wikipedia, Googled June 11, 2023.

6. Zeidler’s Florist, Evansville, IN.