Maloderous plants
- To: m*@ucdavis.edu
- Subject: Maloderous plants
- From: P* H* <p*@nevco.k12.ca.us>
- Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 11:46:30 -0800
OK, I'll bite — because this is a bit more fun than an ethical debate on
lawns and water policy ...
Mach T. Fukada posted:
One person's sweet smelling perfume is another persons poison. Me, I
can't
abide with Plumeria sp. flowers stuck in the same room with we.
Early last spring, I nearly drove an office colleague home for the day
when I brought in a large, flowering bowl of "Paperwhite" Narcissi,
which has a powerful (maloderous? to some), sickeningly sweet smell.
Plumeria sp. is similar in scent.
My own list of powerfully-smelling flora:
• Salvia apiana (White Sage, a California native). The best salvia for
making smudge sticks. Visitors to my garden good-naturedly forced to
touch a leaf and smell their fingers, which usually makes them wince and
exclaim "Whew!"
• Salvia sonomensis (Sonoma sage, mat sage). Same as above.
• Monardella spp. Coyote mint. Like Salvia clevelandii, its smell has a
strong minty bite that some folks find a little too strong to enjoy.
• Catnip (sorry, I'm braindead on the genus — Nepeta??). I'd love to
hear some funny stories about attempts to grow catnip in a garden
patrolled by cats. I've yet to meet a cat owner that successful grew
catnip without fencing it in. My cats scratched up, dug up, and rolled
on my live plants until there was eventually no trace that the plants
existed.
They aren't plants, but fungi can be maloderous, no? I suspect some of
you are familiar with foul-smelling fungi. Smell, in fact, is one of the
key ways to identifying many species of fungi, but this is off the
subject.
Paul Harrar
Nevada City, CA
Sunset Zone 7, 2,700 feet
