Orchids with a strong scent

[Leafmite]

Originally Posted by DirtyCoconuts

remember smell is deeply personal. the air temp and humidity, ones nasal passages and olfactory nerve are even unique as scent receptors are not always assigned to nerve connections until you actually smell something so the path of one's life can alter the way they smell something compared to the way i might


that said, they are minor differences in the smell but can be major differences in the intensity of the smell. I have a few Grand duke jasmines and they are massive scent flowers but i have a neighbor who claims they are barely scented.

Maybe your neighbor is comparing the Grand Duke Jasmine to other more fragrant sambac varieties (i.e. Belle of India, elongated form) or other types of jasmines. I have grown it in the past and didn't think it was as fragrant as some of the others.

---------- Post added at 01:40 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:37 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Shadeflower

The Bellina is a strong and beautiful scent but it is a tricky plant to grow, Violacea is far easier and thus produces more flowers and smells stronger I have found but I think a really strong Bellina should be able to overpower a violacea, one day hopefully I will get there. I managed to get a Bellina to produce 2 flowers before but not consistently. To get a Bellina to flower is worth the trickyness to keep it happy.

What I am getting from this is that I need to add a violacea to my collection. I really love my bellina....

[SouthPark]

A Rlc. Memoria Crispin Rosales 'No. 2' (I'm growing here) that is currently in-flower at my places ------ it has a scent that really packs a punch. Quite strong. Fortunately a nice scent - but somewhat over-powering ...... unlike some subtle and more elegant perfume cattleya. Although ----- the fragrance is not a turn-off ----- so it's ok! Also ----- if the air-flow happens to be going in the growing area, and somebody is down-stream of the flow ..... then they'll certainly smell that scent from quite a distance away. Can be surprising just what a single flower is capable of heheheh.

[katsucats]

I'm not sure what you're getting at in that article, but we can agree to disagree.

[DirtyCoconuts]

But it is about how one PERCEIVES the scent

The same input is not received the same in each person due to the difference in their neural pathways based on their introduction to the scent.

[katsucats]

Originally Posted by DirtyCoconuts

But it is about how one PERCEIVES the scent

The same input is not received the same in each person due to the difference in their neural pathways based on their introduction to the scent.

Sorry, but I don't see the relevance. For example, how I perceive a brick in a metaphysical sense is irrelevant, in my view, when we're talking about corroborating views of a brick. There exists a common intersubjective/objective universe, I'm sure we could all agree. If I say something is red, you'd understand what I mean and agree that it's red, even if we might perceive 'red' differently.

If you're saying I might see a brick and identify it as an elephant, and you might ass a brick and identify it as a boat, in a way that it's impossible to corroborate scents, I disagree.

That fact that we could connect food ingredients is proof. I could taste or smell bacon, and identify bacon. It doesn't matter how I perceive the smell of bacon, the fact that I understand that it's bacon is enough.

If you mean that we use different analogies as reference when identifying scents, I don't see what the problem would be. It takes a little imagination to recognize similar components between smells, since often times something would have multiple odorants anyways. But it would be odd to say that one could not corroborate a single odorant.

We might have different analogies when we describe the scent of 1,8-cineole or geraniol, but when we smell 1,8-cineole again in a different context, it would elicit the same description. There is corroboration. It's not random.

[Roberta]

Taste is actually mostly scent... and there are some definite, and documented, genetic differences - one that comes to mind is cilantro (the leaves of the coriander plant) To most people, it has a flavor that is close to parsley (but a bit more interesting... it's an important ingredient in various cuisines,such as Mexican and Chinese.) But there are some people - and it's genetic, runs in families, for whom it tastes like soap. Really unpleasant. The molecules may be the same, but the receptors are not.

[katsucats]

So Roberta, are you saying that if someone describes cilantro as soap, that wouldn't provide any value if they then go on to describe something else as soap, because this deeply personal aspect makes relating to other people's description of scents impossible?

The vast majority of people describe Sharry Baby as chocolate, and even the people that don't, when we drill down, we realize that they are talking about purer chocolate and not chocolate candy bars.

In my own experience, I've been able to corroborate nearly 100% of the orchid scents I've come across with descriptions I've run across on the internet. Where I describe Enc. cordigera as matcha, I could easily envision a chocolate component that it's commonly associated with. There is rarely a time, if at all, where I couldn't see where a person is coming from at all.

Even when it comes to cilantro, it's easy to imagine components of parsley and soap in the mix, even if one doesn't taste it that way. These tastes are not a categorical set. There is a metric space that could be used to establish a distance between them. We know that certain things taste like other things without them being exactly the same. When I hear other people describe the taste of a pasta, it is not a foreign alien language.

[Roberta]

The soapy perception of cilantro is strong enough (and prevalent enough) that if I'm doing a dinner party for a group of people, and I'm likely to use it, I ask - and leave it out or serve on the side if it is an issue. I don't want a guest to find my main dish disgusting and inedible. There are certain guests who I know have this "mutation" and I adjust the menu accordingly.

[katsucats]

I personally don't have such an adverse reaction to cilantro, but if someone describes it as soapy, I could see a component of the taste that I experience that could be within some distance of a soapy taste. The fact that I experience cilantro differently would not invalidate any list of what herbs taste like, as reference for any chefs or foodies. Someone describing cilantro as soapy would net a non-negative contribution toward its taste for anyone else, whether they've experienced cilantro or not. I think we all understand the taste better once we piece together several descriptions of the same thing. The distance between these descriptions are never so large that they become entropy or noise.

[DirtyCoconuts]

One other way of looking at it is the nerve’s ability to heal. It is the only nerve that regenerates the way it does and it has a lot to do with its structure. The long receptors that are branched with cilia are easily broken and I know from a brief time boxing in college.

I had a friend with whom I sparred and he got himself in front of a very large man’s cross and his nose went flat. It was rebuilt and the plastic surgeon did a great job BUT he now smells a rose as garlic and wax smells like white chocolate...clearly, some mechanical pathways regenerated wrong but the receptor has not changed nor has the stimulus