Heavenly Scent:

One of my key garden criteria is scent.  I love the smell of lilacs, of spice bush viburnum, of roses, petunias & even the dusty, grandmotherly smell of alyssum. I get excited when the hyacinths perfume the air, and when I get a full face of peony.

So, you can imagine my excitement when I visited the city recently and kept smelling a wonderful scent. As I took my first stroll across the Brooklyn Bridge, I was surrounded by a nice floral smell. I thought at first that it was the woman in front of me. But the scent continued. It was in the park. And the streets.  It was even in the stores.

Has NYC piped in some lovely scent (like they do at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel)?

Could one day of warm weather wake up Spring buds & flowers?

Was I crazy? And just happy for a sliver of warmth after a long, hard winter?

How do flowers make their perfume, I wondered. According to  an article on Purdue.edu, Understanding of floral scents blossoms in Purdue laborator: Floral scents begin as oils that are produced by the petals in most plants. Because these oils evaporate easily in warm weather, scientists call them volatile compounds. The aroma of a flower may contain as few as seven to ten different oils, as in snapdragon or petunia, or as many as 100 different chemicals, as is the case with orchids.

This same article notes that intensity of flower scents have decreased in modern flowers.  As plants have been bred to maximize color, shape, and other characteristics, such as long-lasting blooms after cutting, the scents have mysteriously disappeared. Natalia Dudareva, assistant professor of reproductive biology in the Department of Horticulture at Purdue University, has found new insights into the biology of floral scents – insights that might result in sweeter smelling roses, plus a bouquet of other benefits. Improving floral scent is a goal of the $20 billion per year horticulture industry, but it is also important to agriculture. Almost three-fourths of all crops depend on insect pollinators attracted by floral scents. Honey bees alone are responsible for pollinating one third of U.S. crops.

Boosting floral scents would not only make flower beds more aesthetically pleasing, it would also improve the yield and quality of many crops as some scents are used to repel harmful insects. And I, for one, would love it. But this does not solve the mystery of NYC’s heavenly scent. According to the article, flowers time release of their sweet oils with the proper time for pollination.

Then I remembered. my sweet friend Roycea had gifted me a spray oil fragrance and I was wearing it that day. The next time I used that oil, I had the olfactory Déjà vu. Not accustomed to wearing perfume, it never dawned on me that I could be smelling myself. But even more than that it was triggering memories of the wonderful weekend we had just spent together.

Turns out that smell is the closest sense to emotion. Olfactory déjà vu is actually a powerful, scent-triggered phenomenon where a smell instantly evokes a deep, familiar, yet unidentifiable memory or a feeling of having experienced the exact moment before. This sensory experience frequently acting as a "nostalgic" flashback. 

According to National Institutes of Health (.gov):

Key Aspects of Olfactory Déjà Vu:

• Memory Trigger: Smells are processed near the brain's emotional and memory centers (amygdala and hippocampus), causing odors to trigger vivid, emotional recollections more intensely than sights or sounds.

• The Proust Phenomenon: This term describes how scent-cued memories can bring back detailed, forgotten past experiences, often with strong emotions.

• Neural Mechanisms: The sensation occurs when an aroma triggers a familiar, intense, yet often "out of place" memory, linking current surroundings with a vague past, say NIH researchersand Next Avenue.

• Psychological Impact: These odors can evoke intense negative, nostalgic flashbacks related to trauma or bring comfort and happiness by stimulating positive memories.

I find it fascinating that odor can trigger memories as far back as early childhood. For Helen Keller, who, deprived of sight and sound, depended heavily on her sense of smell, a trigger was petrichor, the smell of approaching rain as it releases essential oils in the earth. "The atmosphere is charged with countless odors," wrote the legendary author and activist. "Smell is a potent wizard that transports us across a thousand miles, and all the years we have lived."

While a soothing throwback aroma could be the smell of fresh cotton sheets off the clothesline, or onions carmelizing on the stove, it's not surprising that many evocative smells arise from nature, whether it's the oil

from a grove of balsam firs (that "Christmas tree" smell) or dying leaves in October (raking and jumping in the pile), or floral scents (good and some bad). 

I encourage you today to get out in nature and let your nose make some new memories. While the researchers say your ability to smell decreases with age, my recent experience shows it's not too late.