Re: Mirabilis

Sean A. O'Hara wrote:
I have also found that certain color forms tend to be more fragrant than others, though, as stated, growing conditions can play a role. This would seem to me to be a fragrance that some people might have trouble smelling (everyone's nose works differently). My own observations since I was a child would seem to point at the redder forms (crimson, magenta, deep purple, fuchsia) being LESS fragrant and the paler forms (yellow, white, and possibly lavender) being MORE fragrant.

The fragrance is certainly most obvious in the evening. It can carry on a light breeze, if there are a number of flowers/plants, but normally you have to get close to the flower to smell it.
A few thoughts about scented flowers.:-

1) How easily/strongly anybody can smell flower scents seems to be to some extent a personal idiosyncrasy. And of course some folks have actually lost the power to smell at least pleasant scents due to one or another misadventure, like an old friend of mine who suffered this loss following some procedure during childbirth and my husband who largely lost his sense of smell after working in a soil testing lab which used a lot of acid and had a faulty fume cupboard. (This was over fifty years ago in Africa where some science equipment at the time was definitely on the primitive side).

2) Although most people when savouring scented flowers tend to bring their noses close to them, this does not always give the best effect. I vividly remember a garden I once knew where there was a big bed completely bordered with sweet violets. If one just passed it by on a warmish day when these were in flower there was commonly a tremendous waft of delicious perfume, but if one stopped and brought one's nose close to the plants it was difficult to perceive any scent at all. This makes sense I guess in the context of attracting insects, as apart from bumble bees (which are game to try almost any sort of flower on the offchance) a lot of them will not draw near to investigate unless beguiled at a distance by an attractive scent. Unlike us they apparently don't go thrusting their noses into every flower in sight just in case.

3) As a generalization, plants aiming to attract day flying insects tend to be brightly coloured and to smell sweet during warm daylight hours. In contrast those which are commonly pollinated by night fliers (almost exclusively moths I think) are most often white or pale coloured to stand out well by moonlight. Quite a number of these do not smell at all in the daytime only putting forth their sweetness at dusk (again mainly on warm calm evenings). I have one delightful example of this growing only a few feet from my front porch - Rhododendron formosum, with cinnamon buds opening to pure white blooms. It smells slightly in daylight, but the full splendour of its scent just bursts forth at dusk. I can see it out the window in the distance as I write and the buds ar fattening. If we are lucky when it comes out shortly we will be getting quite balmy nights and it will be possible to go out and really luxuriate in its perfume in comfort. I doubt though it will ever find a pollinator locally. Many night plants seem to be rather specialized in their pollination requirements and there seems little likelihood the importer thought to bring its proper pollinator with it!

(Come to think of it, even if the Rhodo itself was allowed in nowadays, draconian phytosanitary requirements would certainly show no tolerance for bringing in any moth to service it, no matter how useful it might be to the tree!).

A few night pollinated plants are even more conomical, not only producing scent only after dark, but some not even opening until late in the day and going to bed at dawn. Mirabilis jalapa itself typically does this, which has earned it the name of Four O'clock. And this species is of course an exception to the generalization under 3) that only day blooming plants are brightly coloured.

The night bloomer which I remember from my childhood was what we called Moonflower, not however the Ipomoea usually found under this name, but almost certainly some sort of Brugmnasia, though not one mentioned in any account I can find. It was white flowered and had the usual hanging trumpets, but until late in the day these hung down closed and crumpled as though nearly dead. By late afternoon they had stiffened up and begun to produce the most delicious fragrance.

Moira
--
Tony & Moira Ryan,
Wainuiomata, North Island, NZ. Pictures of our garden at:-
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/cherie1/Garden/TonyandMoira/index.htm
NEW PICTURES AND DIAGRAMS ADDED 20/Feb/2005

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