[HN Gopher] Why Your Roses Smell Nice
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Why Your Roses Smell Nice
Author : dnetesn
Score : 17 points
Date : 2023-06-17 20:52 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (worldsensorium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (worldsensorium.com)
| jcims wrote:
| I find it extremely difficult to reliably find roses for sale
| that actually smell like anything at all.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Here's 206 roses trees varieties ready to order [0]. GF is a
| lot into flowers and got a lot of stuff from this store, highly
| recommend them for any plant, great quality and care. Europe
| only I guess.
|
| [0] https://www.promessedefleurs.com/rosiers/rosiers-
| parfumes.ht...
| bsder wrote:
| I don't see any varietal in there that I can't get from any
| other store that also doesn't have any scent.
| eclipticplane wrote:
| Most home garden friendly roses are bred for disease
| resistance, climate, pest resistance, and flower production.
| Scent isn't in there.
|
| I have a 'Honey Perfume' that smells nice, but most of the
| other varieties I have only have very faint scents.
| bsder wrote:
| I concur. Even roses which are extremely expensive and
| nominally "highly scented" don't smell at all, anymore. I used
| to have to go on a hunt for a varietal with scent, and now even
| with a lot of hunting, I can't find them anymore.
|
| The problem is apparently that some enzyme that makes scent
| also tends to break down the flower. So, the "lifetime" of a
| cut rose is inversely dependent upon the volume of scent.
|
| And, since everything is shipped around the world from the
| absolute lowest cost area, "lifetime" becomes the only goal
| with everything else being secondary.
|
| Thus, we have roses with no scent.
| whyenot wrote:
| Your rose smells nice because it was bred to smell nice by human
| breeders. All the different varieties of cultivated roses that we
| have today are the product of hybridizing and selective breeding
| ("artificial selection") of twelve or so wild rose species; a
| process that has continued over hundreds if not thousands of
| years.
|
| While not a hard and fast rule, most plant species with strongly
| scented flowers usually are white (jasmine, gardenia, etc.) and
| pollinated by nocturnal animals like moths and bats. (A great
| counter-example is corpse flowers, which use scent to attract a
| completely different guild of pollinators).
| bequanna wrote:
| Where I live roses grow wild and always have. They smell as
| good as cultivated roses.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| This is all about chemistry and genetics. But nothing on 'why
| roses smell nice'.
|
| It's really a puzzle. Why on earth should Homo Sapiens consider a
| rose's smell to be 'nice'? Dogs like roses' smell about the same
| as shit. They don't give a damn.
|
| Further, why are rainbows pretty? Why is a waterfall inspiring?
| And on and on.
|
| You have to have some kind of special model to explain this, I
| think. Something beyond simple reproductive survival. But I don't
| know what.
|
| Anyway, interesting that we all smell slightly differently! So
| indeed qualia is a bigger issue than we may have thought.
| throwaway462910 wrote:
| I've seen the argument before that humans find flowers pretty
| because they indicate fertile land, where there are flowers
| there will be animals, etc. Impossible to really know, I
| suppose.
| [deleted]
| peepeepoopoox wrote:
| Arboreal human ancestors ate a lot of fruit.
| varjag wrote:
| It could possibly be ancestral from some specie that relied on
| flowers in a more direct way.
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(page generated 2023-06-17 23:00 UTC)