I’ll have to go smell my kaki persimmons. I’ve got quite a lot of those. Do they smell more when the leaves are young or mature. I heard of people making the leaves into tea and enjoying the taste. Perhaps it’s an acquired taste if they stimulate our olfactory senses in the wrong way? I clipped some of the tops off wherever the young buds weren’t showing flowers to reduce the height on some particularly vigorous trees. Maybe I’ll feel adventurous and brew some of the leaves up.
The worst smelling trees in my yard are the pears. They are quite repugnant while in bloom.
Sort of an obvious one, but our Umbellularia californica (California bay laurel) has an intense and mesmerizing scent, especially when you mow the lawn nearby where leaves have fallen. The scent apparently gives some people a headache, but no one in our family luckily!
I roasted the nuts last fall and they were tasty in cookies but a little too strong of a flavor for eating out of hand for my tastes.
There’s a thought. Some apple cultivars do smell nice in bloom. Is there a chart or list of the best ones? Any rankings by anyone for smell on apple trees?
I can’t smell them yet, but in the summer, kaki leaves start to smell like something rotting. I haven’t paid close attention to particular cultivars or if hybrids are the same or not. It’s the kaki leaves, not the blossoms ,that smell. I agree that pear blossoms don’t smell very good either.
Some 30 years ago I rented bees to pollinate an apple orchard…so I know some are more fragrant than others. (I am curious if there is any study or chart on the topic.)
I came across the website of “Gabriel Hemery, British author, tree photographer, and forest scientist.” https://gabrielhemery.com/fragrant-and-odiferous-trees/
He wrote a short article on " Fragrant and odiferous trees" some might find interesting.
Under the pretty photo is this caption - “Elder flowers are sweet and perfumed when young, but smell of cat’s pee when older.”
I have never thought the Elder flowers smelled like cat pee! too funny. Perhaps the British elder trees are unique that way. I will say that Eastern Red Cedars with berries on them (they are an invasive nuisance tree here) smell like cat pee! Especially when you cut one for your Christmas tree and bring it inside the house where the smell is more contained…
Citrus blooms have unmistakable jasmine smell. I just started growing a few varieties of jasmine (not all in the same family) - Madison star, pink, Arabian and recently rooted some night blooming ones as well. I am not sure if Arabian is cold-hardy for z9B, but others should grow well here. @Drew51 is right - when I went to my friend’s place to get cuttings of night blooming jasmine, I could smell it inside the car while parking on the street from the plant in his backyard.
I am going to transfer Michelia Alba from the pot to in-ground soon. Hopefully it survives and I plan to graft the champaca on it next season. I really like the fragrance of both varieties.
i agree. Night jessamines are the ultimate sweet-smelling blooms, which permeates and pierces throughout the night. One of my many favorite tropicals. The flowers emit the haunting perfume for several days. The petals start slender, then get broader with time. The broader the petals, the milder the scent profile.
For me it’s the european lindens that are just absolutely enchanting. Just straight mesmerizing I walk my dogs and just follow the scent blindly. A close second for me are the old lilacs and I think how lucky I am for all these old ladies planting them everywhere for me. Some of the chokecherries growing near the creeks smell real nice right now also.
Lindens feed all the bees and pollinators also and if you do not live in a area with sourwood trees the best thing you can do for the bees in your area is to plant a linden or a sourwood in a area you don’t use herbicides or pesticides.
Speaking of bad smelling trees I was forced to walk right by 4 of these callery pear trees today and remarked at how bad they smelled and this lady getting in her car said how much she enjoyed them and wasn’t sure it was a bad smell
i sometimes think people have scent-‘blindness’, just as people can have color-blindness. That lady probably only has olfactory receptors for the perfumey substance of calleries, and has none for the stinky substance. If remember it right, some people can’t smell asparagus pee… either that or their kidneys don;t produce it, haha
taste-blindness is another possibility. Some people think some fruits are excellent, which to me aren’t really special(and vice-versa…) Maybe ‘blindness’ is the wrong term. “Individuality” is perhaps more accurate.
I definitely feel many people have scent blindness. If it was a guy who had said that to me i would have had a hilarious response It might be nice to not smell the awful things so strongly but then what does cheese taste like? I also think you can train your sense of smell and some people do things that block it.
I very much love my good sense of smell and hope to keep it intact
It might be nice to not smell the awful things so strongly but then what does cheese taste like? I also think you can train your sense of smell and some people do things that block it.