Human Flower Project

Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Speak, Fragrance

76 readers divulged which fragrances inspire, relax and agitate them. It turns out that scent is a window on the spirit.

Rosa Metz and waning roses
Photo: Mary Annette Pember

Everyone’s entitled to his or her secrets. But there are other parts of interiority we’re more than happy to share; it’s just that no one ever asks about them.

Stop. No. Please don’t recount your dreams!

Instead, we asked a bunch of very interesting people about their favorite fragrances out of mere curiosity, and to our great surprise, nearly everyone responded. As intimate and generally unspoken as our olfactory lives are, most people were quite forthcoming, some very energetically so, about botanical scents.

A generous 76 people in ten countries replied, many sending along images too. And while we won’t attempt to summarize their fascinating and very diverse answers (we hope you’ll enjoy reading them all through, below) we can’t resist a few scent-sations.

Lots of us are hard-wired for honeysuckle. This sweet flower is adored by men and women from many countries. For lots of folks, it’s happily associated with childhood. Ann Lansing, of Asheville, North Carolina, writes, “It reminds me of the onset of warm weather and summer which I love.  I used to love to drive by myself with all the windows down on warm evenings and smell the honeysuckle.  I also love to open up the bloom and sip the nectar.”

Maria Henson writes, “Fragrance = memories.” And it seems that’s true. For even though we only asked people to list three botanical fragrances and their preferred cologne or perfume, many, many folks poured out associations with the past.

“I loved the smell of lilacs that grew next to my grandma & grampa’s morning porch,” writes Jacque Wurzelbacher of Chicago.  Cinnamon reminds Kim Lehman of Christmases in rural Pennsylvania. India Flint writes from Australia, “Golden calendula has me back at age four, pencil in hand undertaking my first botanical drawing under the guidance of my mother.”

Others were inspired less by homey scents than distant ones, summoning thoughts of what might have been. DD of Arlington, Massachusettes, remembers pineapple sage.  “We once got such a plant at a nursery in Austin, and then left it out on the porch at a place near West Lake Hills where we were staying, and the next morning it had been nipped away by a deer. I don’t think I’ve smelled pineapple sage since then, but I remember it as something delicious.”

Continue Reading