Re: Mirabilis

The Mirabilis jalapa I grow have been reseeding themselves in my yard for the last 30 years. I'm not sure if it just that kids pay more attention to these facts, but I do recall them as being pleasently scented when I was a boy. But today, as Bob says, unless I place my nose right in the flower I can't notice the fragrance. These plants are now more shaded and receive more water than they used to; I wonder if that has something to do with their scent too.

Besides, I've never been able to have any pure colour strain; always flowers with mixed colours: red and white, yellow and red (or pink), red (or pink) and white or yellow and white. It is one of those fun games of genetics, when the hybrids don't get an intermidiate colour but both colours without mixing, sometimes even half of the flower being white and half red (or pink), sometimes one of the colour dominates and has spots or lines of the other.

The seeds were also fun when I was a kid as they look like little granates and it was very tempting to pick them off the plant.

Fran
-------------------------------------------------------
Francisco Javier de la Mota
Miraflores de la Sierra Zone 7/8
Madrid, Spain


----- Original Message ----- From: "Bob Beer" <sazci@hotmail.com>
To: <medit-plants@ucdavis.edu>
Sent: Saturday, September 10, 2005 9:20 PM
Subject: RE: Mirabilis


I've seen this reference to the "heavy scent" of Mirabilis jalapa many times, and chock it up to seed catalogue exaggeration. Istanbul is overrun with Mirabilis, it's around just about every tree in the city and front gardens are overflowing with it, but I never smelled anything unless I stuck my face right into it, then I can detect a light fragrance.

A white one does sound nice though!

Another plant I've seen referred to as smelling wonderful is Passiflora incarnata, the passionflower native to the southern US. I wonder if all the seed/plant catalogues just copy each other's bylines? "Heavenly scent" seems to get applied to it all the time. But to me it smells like a strange brand of beef jerky, very strange. P. caerulea smells wonderful, and P. alato-caerulea truly *is* heavenly though..

bob

From: "Anthony Lyman-Dixon" <Lyman@lyman-dixon.freeserve.co.uk>
Reply-To: Lyman@lyman-dixon.freeserve.co.uk
To: <medit-plants@ucdavis.edu>
Subject: Mirabilis
Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2005 22:28:47 +0100

Hi everyone,

We have a white flowering Mirabilis jalapa outside the door of our shed.
Several people commented this month  on its pleasant scent  so I looked
it up in Roy Gender's "Scented Plants of the World" which is my "Bible"
for such things and found that he claims the species is heavily scented
specially at night. This is news to me, I have grown them for years and
have never noticed any scent before. This particular plant is also
unique in having survived an English winter outside.  So are white
Mirabilis  better scented than red or yellow specimens? Do they need a
settled environment in which to flower in the second year? Is this a
mixed up plant with a confused sense of time which makes it  think it
will attract pollinating moths in the mid day sun?

Anthony















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