Archive for the Category »Montreal Flowers «
Scent not only changes over time, but with time of day. Early morning is when scents are strongest, the oils most powerful, and so when roses are harvested for rose oil.
Rose scent may be more powerful with the first blooms of summer. Rose scent even can change from outdoors to indoors. Just the cutting can change the chemical releases that we smell, so a rose not very fragrant outdoors may be quite scented once in a vase inside.
The other fact to keep in mind is that scent in flowers, including roses, is not meant by nature for us but rather for the pollinators of the flowers. Scents in flowers are signals to those pollinators such as some bees to come visit the flowers, and are often smelled before they see the flowers.
Flowers release scent when they are ready to be pollinated, which in roses often translates to a more powerful scent when flowers are half open.
In general, roses with the best scents are darker colors, have more petals, and have thick or velvety petals. Red and pink roses often smell like what we term “rose”. White and yellows often smell of violets, nasturtium, and lemon. Orange roses often smell of fruits, violets, nasturtium, and clove.
Most true rose oil comes from Bulgaria, Morocco, Iran, Turkey, and more recently from China. The oil is extracted from the petals either with alcohol or through distillation. The true oil is very expensive as it takes about 250 pounds of petals to make a mere ounce of oil.
For this reason, rose oil is often diluted with similarly scented oils such as geraniol from geraniums, or even the synthetic phenylethanol. While fine for fragrance uses, and excellent for making them affordable, if using rose oil medicinally you need the true oil and not a product marked “fragrance”.
Rose oil has been used medicinally from the ancient Chinese, through medieval times, even through the present. One use is for skincare, especially for dry, sensitive, and aging skin. Another use is as a mild sedative, antidepressant, and for stress conditions. Rose oil (or tea from the petals) may help digestion, stomach ailments, or sore throat.
Vitamins A, C, and P come from roses. Rose scent even may aid memory. In a German study, people spritzed with rose scent during a memory exercise, then again while sleeping, had 13 percent better recall.
The next time you smell a rose, try and discern some of the many possible scents and how they change over time and under different conditions.
Most when they see a rose bend down to sniff. If you’re like me, you probably never really thought much about rose fragrance except if it’s missing, faint, or how nice it is. Just what gives a rose its wonderful fragrance, and how this is used, is complex and fascinating.
Roses have been around and are documented longer than most of our garden plants. The earliest record of them seems to be rose leaves found in the Colorado Rockies, dating back 35 to 32 million years to the Paleolithic era. First mention of them, and their appearance in artistic motifs, was in Asia about 3000BC, with mention elsewhere about 2300 BC.
The fragrance of roses was valued by the Romans, used to scent rooms and after bathing. Cleopatra supposedly filled a room over a foot deep with rose petals while wooing Marc Anthony. The two main roses used in this era were the Damask and Gallica types.
Rose oil, often seen as “attar of roses” or “rose otto”, was probably first made in 10th century Persia. This was the first import of roses to Europe, leading to the subsequent growing of the plants there.
Prior to the Victorian era of the late 1800’s, fragrance in flowers was used for functions such as medicinally or to hide odors. This period saw the use of flowers in gardens and homes merely for their pleasing fragrance.
This era also saw the first attempts to define and classify scents. Yet, it wasn’t until later in the last century that the seven main rose scents were accepted, and the responsible chemicals identified.
The seven main rose scents are rose (or damask), nasturtium, orris (which is similar to violets), violets, apple, clove, and lemon (the fruit, not the blossoms). Orris is a compound used to fix or preserve odors.
Then there are 26 other less common odors you may smell in roses. These include such diverse ones as honeysuckle, moss, hyacinth, honey, wine, marigold, peppers, parsley, and fruits such as raspberry.
Scent in roses, depending on which one, comes from one or more of over 300 chemical compounds. Yet in rose oil, only four make up less than one percent but produce over 90 percent of the fragrance.
If you think rose scent is getting complicated, consider how we smell. These chemicals evaporate and our nose receptors pick up the volatile compounds. Each of these evaporate at a different rate, which means that rose fragrance will change over time. For example, clove evaporates 36 times more slowly than citrus, so once you pick up a citrus scent it can disappear with the clove scent appearing later.
If you’ve tried growing roses in our cold northern climate, only to have them die, you may have given up. But don’t, as there are many varieties that are hardy and will survive with little care.
The most common problem in choosing roses is trying to grow all the latest hybrids you see advertised in the glossy magazines and catalogs. Most of these are modern hybrids, and are only marginally hardy in the warmest parts or warm microclimates on your property.
These small areas of warmer temperatures might be in front of a south facing wall or side of a building, or on a south facing slope.
Of the so-called “modern roses” (those developed since what many consider the first hybrid tea rose ‘La France’ in 1867), the ones most commonly seen in garden centers and through mail order include hybrid teas, floribundas, grandifloras, miniatures, and climbers.
Another five classes of roses are in the “modern” group, of which the shrub and rugosa hybrids are often hardy. Even though these latter ones were first developed in the late 1800s, many selections have been developed since then which are available now.
Of these selections, several series are seen in our area. The Explorers were developed in Ottawa at the Experiment Station and are named after famous Canadian explorers. The Parkland series was developed in western Canada at the Morden Experiment Station and carries names such as Morden Centennial.
The Meidiland series is from France, and usually has “Meidiland” in the name, such as Meidiland Pink. Then there are the David Austin English garden roses, beautiful and fragrant and fairly resistant to diseases, but most in this series are not hardy in most of Vermont.
The 15 or so classes of “old garden roses” mainly were developed prior to 1867. These classes and groupings of old and modern roses may differ slightly with each rosarian (or rose fancier) and reference. Of these, the ones that are most hardy for our area include the albas, gallicas, damasks, and centifolias.
By June the big push is over. You probably have most of your garden planted, except perhaps for tender transplants and sequential plantings of crops like lettuce, and now it’s time to start maintaining what you’ve put in.
This means staying on top of the weeding and watering. A good rule of thumb for watering both vegetable and flower gardens is to provide one inch of water a week, if the rain doesn’t do it. It’s better to soak the soil around plants heavily every few days rather than watering lightly to encourage deep rooting.
Try not to water in the evenings or late in the afternoon as this promotes foliar diseases because leaves stay wet all night. As plants grow older and get larger, they will require more water, especially as the weather gets hotter. If you garden on sandy soils, you may need to water nearly every day if there is a long period of time with no rain
If you planted thickly, thin rows of carrots, beets, and other vegetables and flowers when plants are still small to avoid damage to the roots. Allowing adequate space between plants provides better air circulation and helps prevent disease infestations.
You also need to be vigilant about checking for insect pests. Cutworms, for example, are a threat to newly transplanted seedlings of melon, tomato, cole crops, and cucumber.
Placing a cardboard collar around the base of the plant (one inch in the soil and two inches above) will discourage these pests. Other pests to watch for include cabbage worms, cabbage root maggots, and flea beetles.
If you have had problems with these pests in past years, consider placing floating row covers over your young crops before these pests appear.
In mid-June, when the soil has warmed up, apply a thick layer of straw, leaves, or black plastic mulch to control weeds and retain moisture. Weed the area well before laying down mulch.
You can lay newspapers (at least 10-sheet thickness) under mulch or between rows to help with weed control. The paper will lay down easier if wetted first. Avoid colored or glossy paper. Regular newsprint contains soy-based inks, which should cause no problems in gardens.
If you don’t have a compost pile, this is a good time to start one for next year’s garden. Locate your pile in a convenient spot near your garden. The proximity to the planting area makes it easy to add compost to the soil in a year or two, when the pile has completely decomposed.
You can add any organic materials to the pile–leaves, straw, hay, or vegetable matter–but avoid diseased vegetable plants, grass clippings that were treated with herbicides, bones, and greasy kitchen scraps.
You may want to enclose the pile with wire fencing to stop materials from blowing away and to keep the pile looking neat.
It is the adaptability of the orchids, which is the cause of their spread throughout the world. Orchids use resources such as insects and birds of the region, to ensure pollination and reproduction.
Each type of orchid is dependent on a particular pollinating agent. The orchids use variety of tricks to insure pollination. Some of them attract pollinating agents with the help of fragrance or scent of food.
While the others manage to fool the male insects, by imitating the ‘female insect look’ or appearance. Because of this, future of the orchids growing in the wild, depends heavily on conservation of the entire ecosystem.
Extinction of a species of insect or bird, may mean extinction of the orchid depending on it. The following are some interesting facts about orchids:
- The orchids have a unique identification signature, in the form of a structure, which harbors its male and female reproductive organs. This structure is referred to as ‘column’.
- Orchid flowers are famous for their colors and one can find every imaginable color and shade in orchids.
- Some of the orchids have sweet fragrance, while few others, smell like stinking or rotting meat.
- Orchid flowers come in varying sizes. The flowers of Platystele stenostachya are small enough to fit on the head of a nail. On the other hand, those of Cattleya gigas orchid are eight to eleven inches across.
- The giant in the orchid family is Renanthera storei. It can grow to a height of 20 feet.
- An orchid can live as long as 100 years, whilst the orchid flowers can last for few weeks. However, the blossoms wilt quickly, after fertilization.
- There are very few species of the orchid family that can be used as food or to obtain medicine from it. In China, some of the orchid types are used as aphrodisiacs.
- In tropics, different types of orchids are found in the cloud forests in mountainous regions, while they are less in numbers, at lower elevations, in the rain forests.
- Orchids from the temperate areas, like Indiana, grow on the ground. On the other hand, orchids in the tropics, grow on trees or rocks.
- The orchids are not parasites; but use decaying organic matter collected on the bark of trees or in fissures of rocks for their nourishment.
- In the past, the roots of the orchids found in Europe, were used as aphrodisiacs.
- The main commercial source of natural vanilla, is an orchid named as Vanilla planifolia.
- Orchid blooms are used in Asian recipes as ingredients, and in Hawaii, they are used to dress the food and drinks.
- The male bowerbirds of New Guinea are known to present orchid flowers to female bowerbirds, in an attempt to win their heart.
Orchids are loved for their colors, sizes, shapes and are maintained as potted houseplants in flower gardens or greenhouses.
In spite of the many varieties of orchids, these delicate, exotic plants, the world over, are being threatened with extinction. Though, 42 different orchid types are found in Indiana, many of them are endangered for one or the other reason.
