Re: malodorous plants

At 11:34 AM 1/30/1999 -0800, you wrote:
> Lavendula multifida smells like a skunk to me, although it is very
>beautiful.  Nursery catalogs tend to describe it as "oregano-scented",
>which is an EXTREMELY charitable description, IMHO  :-).

To all:

I am a former organic chemist, and enjoy all odors (some to a very limited
degree, though).  Each individual reactions to odors are attached to the
primitive, primal parts of their psyches, and it is interesting to observe
people's reactions to various odors.

There is the phenomonon of people having an anosma to a particular compound
or class of compounds.  An anosma is to the nose what color blindness is to
the eye.  Certain people either can't smell these materials at all, or very
poorly.  There is even a reverse anosma, in which some people have a
hightened sensitivity to a compound.

Chemical structure can have a profound effect on sensitivity.  Irone is the
very potent essence of violets and orris root, and it is many times more
powerful than its ionone cousins, which have only one less carbon atom, but
are otherwise very similar in odor and chemical structure. 

All this makes for the wide spectrum of responses to this string of posts.

Many Salvias are described as having odors like cat markings.  There are
some remarkable ones like Salvia oppositiflora: foliage smells like an old
jar of kerosine.  S. taraxicifolia, however, smell just like old-fashioned soap!

Then there are a lot of scatalogical Teucriums.  As memory serves, either T.
massiliense or T. asiaticum remind me of an outhouse.  T. marum is very
sharply scented with dolichodial, used by the insects devil's walking stick
and certain leaf-cutting ants as a natural repellent (tear gas).
Chemically, it has the same lachrymatory reactive groups found in potent
manufacturing compounds like acrylates and acrolein, a compound which makes
smoke from smoldering fires inside of structures so unpleasant.  It is a
close cousin to nepetalactone, the agent in catnip that sets cats off.  In
fact, T. marum (cat thyme), is so potent on cats that it could be called cat
LSD!


Richard F. Dufresne
313 Spur Road
Greensboro, NC  27406
336-674-3105
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