THE SCENTS OF THE GARDEN
The sweet scents of a garden are by no means the least of its many
delights. Even January brings _Chimonanthus fragrans_, one of the
sweetest and strongest scented of the year's blooms--little
half-transparent yellowish bells on an otherwise naked-looking wall
shrub. They have no stalks, but if they are floated in a shallow dish of
water, they last well for several days, and give off a powerful
fragrance in a room.
During some of the warm days that nearly always come towards the end of
February, if one knows where to look in some sunny, sheltered corner of
a hazel copse, there will be sure to be some Primroses, and the first
scent of the year's first Primrose is no small pleasure. The garden
Primroses soon follow, and, meanwhile, in all open winter weather there
have been Czar Violets and _Iris stylosa_, with its delicate scent,
faintly violet-like, but with a dash of tulip. _Iris reticulata_ is also
sweet, with a still stronger perfume of the violet character. But of all
Irises I know, the sweetest to smell is a later blooming one, _I.
graminea_. Its small purple flowers are almost hidden among the thick
mass of grassy foliage which rises high above the bloom; but they are
worth looking for, for the sake of the sweet and rather penetrating
scent, which is exactly like that of a perfectly-ripened plum.
All the scented flowers of the Primrose tribe are delightful--Primrose,
Polyanthus, Auricula, Cowslip. The actual sweetness is most apparent in
the Cowslip; in the Auricula it has a pungency, and at the same time a
kind of veiled mystery, that accords with the clouded and
curiously-blended colourings of many of the flowers.
Sweetbriar is one of the strongest of the year's early scents, and
closely following is the woodland incense of the Larch, both freely
given off and far-wafted, as is also that of the hardy Daphnes. The
first quarter of the year also brings the bloom of most of the deciduous
Magnolias, all with a fragrance nearly allied to that of the large one
that blooms late in summer, but not so strong and heavy.
The sweetness of a sun-baked bank of Wallflower belongs to April.
Daffodils, lovely as they are, must be classed among flowers of rather
rank smell, and yet it is welcome, for it means spring-time, with its
own charm and its glad promise of the wealth of summer bloom that is
soon to come. The scent of the Jonquil, Poeticus, and Polyanthus
sections are best, Jonquil perhaps best of all, for it is without the
rather coarse scent of the Trumpets and Nonsuch, and also escapes the
penetrating lusciousness of _poeticus_ and _tazetta_, which in the
south of Europe is exaggerated in the case of _tazetta_ into something
distinctly unpleasant.
What a delicate refinement there is in the scent of the wild
Wood-Violet; it is never overdone. It seems to me to be quite the best
of all the violet-scents, just because of its temperate quality. It
gives exactly enough, and never that perhaps-just-a-trifle-too-much that
may often be noticed about a bunch of frame-Violets, and that also in
the south is intensified to a degree that is distinctly undesirable. For
just as colour may be strengthened to a painful glare, and sound may be
magnified to a torture, so even a sweet scent may pass its appointed
bounds and become an overpoweringly evil smell. Even in England several
of the Lilies, whose smell is delicious in open-air wafts, cannot be
borne in a room. In the south of Europe a Tuberose cannot be brought
indoors, and even at home I remember one warm wet August how a plant of
Balm of Gilead (_Cedronella triphylla_) had its always powerful but
usually agreeably aromatic smell so much exaggerated that it smelt
exactly like coal-gas! A brother in Jamaica writes of the large white
Jasmine: "It does not do to bring it indoors here; the scent is too
strong. One day I thought there was a dead rat under the floor (a thing
which did happen once), and behold, it was a glassful of fresh white
Jasmine that was the offender!"
While on this less pleasant part of the subject, I cannot help thinking
of the horrible smell of the Dragon Arum; and yet how fitting an
accompaniment it is to the plant, for if ever there was a plant that
looked wicked and repellent, it is this; and yet, like Medusa, it has
its own kind of fearful beauty. In this family the smell seems to
accompany the appearance, and to diminish in unpleasantness as the
flower increases in amiability; for in our native wild Arum the smell,
though not exactly nice, is quite innocuous, and in the beautiful white
Arum or _Calla_ of our greenhouses there is as little scent as a flower
can well have, especially one of such large dimensions. In Fungi the bad
smell is nearly always an indication of poisonous nature, so that it
would seem to be given as a warning. But it has always been a matter of
wonder to me why the root of the harmless and friendly Laurustinus
should have been given a particularly odious smell--a smell I would
rather not attempt to describe. On moist warmish days in mid-seasons I
have sometimes had a whiff of the same unpleasantness from the bushes
themselves; others of the same tribe have it in a much lesser degree.
There is a curious smell about the yellow roots of Berberis, not exactly
nasty, and a strong odour, not really offensive, but that I personally
dislike, about the root of _Chrysanthemum maximum_. On the other hand, I
always enjoy digging up, dividing, and replanting the _Asarums_, both
the common European and the American kinds; their roots have a pleasant
and most interesting smell, a good deal like mild pepper and ginger
mixed, but more strongly aromatic. The same class of smell, but much
fainter, and always reminding me of very good and delicate pepper, I
enjoy in the flowers of the perennial Lupines. The only other hardy
flowers I can think of whose smell is distinctly offensive are _Lilium
pyrenaicum_, smelling like a mangy dog, and some of the _Schizanthus_,
that are redolent of dirty hen-house.
There is a class of scent that, though it can neither be called sweet
nor aromatic, is decidedly pleasing and interesting. Such is that of
Bracken and other Fern-fronds, Ivy-leaves, Box-bushes, Vine-blossom,
Elder-flowers, and Fig-leaves. There are the sweet scents that are
wholly delightful--most of the Roses, Honeysuckle, Primrose, Cowslip,
Mignonette, Pink, Carnation, Heliotrope, Lily of the Valley, and a host
of others; then there is a class of scent that is intensely powerful,
and gives an impression almost of intemperance or voluptuousness, such
as Magnolia, Tuberose, Gardenia, Stephanotis, and Jasmine; it is strange
that these all have white flowers of thick leathery texture. In
strongest contrast to these are the sweet, wholesome, wind-wafted scents
of clover-field, of bean-field, and of new-mown hay, and the soft
honey-scent of sun-baked heather, and of a buttercup meadow in April.
Still more delicious is the wind-swept sweetness of a wood of Larch or
of Scotch Fir, and the delicate perfume of young-leaved Birch, or the
heavier scent of the flowering Lime. Out on the moorlands, besides the
sweet heather-scent, is that of flowering Broom and Gorse and of the
Bracken, so like the first smell of the sea as you come near it after a
long absence.
How curiously scents of flowers and leaves fall into classes--often one
comes upon related smells running into one another in not necessarily
related plants. There is a kind of scent that I sometimes meet with,
about clumps of Brambles, a little like the waft of a Fir wood; it
occurs again (quite naturally) in the first taste of blackberry jam, and
then turns up again in Sweet Sultan. It is allied to the smell of the
dying Strawberry leaves.
The smell of the Primrose occurs again in a much stronger and ranker
form in the root-stock, and the same thing happens with the Violets and
Pansies; in Violets the plant-smell is pleasant, though without the high
perfume of the flower; but the smell of an overgrown bed of Pansy-plants
is rank to offensiveness.
Perhaps the most delightful of all flower scents are those whose tender
and delicate quality makes one wish for just a little more. Such a scent
is that of Apple-blossom, and of some small Pansies, and of the wild
Rose and the Honeysuckle. Among Roses alone the variety and degree of
sweet scent seems almost infinite. To me the sweetest of all is the
Provence, the old Cabbage Rose of our gardens. When something
approaching this appears, as it frequently does, among the hybrid
perpetuals, I always greet it as the real sweet Rose smell. One expects
every Rose to be fragrant, and it is a disappointment to find that such
a beautiful flower as Baroness Rothschild is wanting in the sweet scent
that would be the fitting complement of its incomparable form, and to
perceive in so handsome a Rose as Malmaison a heavy smell of decidedly
bad quality. But such cases are not frequent.
There is much variety in the scent of the Tea-Roses, the actual tea
flavour being strongest in the Dijon class. Some have a powerful scent
that is very near that of a ripe Nectarine; of this the best example I
know is the old rose Goubault. The half-double red Gloire de Rosamene
has a delightful scent of a kind that is rare among Roses. It has a good
deal of the quality of that mysterious and delicious smell given off by
the dying strawberry leaves, aromatic, pungent, and delicately refined,
searching and powerful, and yet subtle and elusive--the best sweet smell
of all the year. One cannot have it for the seeking; it comes as it
will--a scent that is sad as a forecast of the inevitable certainty of
the flower-year's waning, and yet sweet with the promise of its timely
new birth.
Sometimes I have met with a scent of somewhat the same mysterious and
aromatic kind when passing near a bank clothed with the great St. John's
Wort. As this also occurs in early autumn, I suppose it to be occasioned
by the decay of some of the leaves. And there is a small yellow-flowered
Potentilla that has a scent of the same character, but always freely and
willingly given off--a humble-looking little plant, well worth growing
for its sweetness, that much to my regret I have lost.
I observe that when a Rose exists in both single and double form the
scent is increased in the double beyond the proportion that one would
expect. _Rosa lucida_ in the ordinary single state has only a very
slight scent; in the lovely double form it is very sweet, and has
acquired somewhat of the Moss-rose smell. The wild Burnet-rose (_R.
spinosissima_) has very little smell; but the Scotch Briars, its garden
relatives, have quite a powerful fragrance, a pale flesh-pink kind,
whose flowers are very round and globe-like, being the sweetest of all.
But of all the sweet scents of bush or flower, the ones that give me the
greatest pleasure are those of the aromatic class, where they seem to
have a wholesome resinous or balsamic base, with a delicate perfume
added. When I pick and crush in my hand a twig of Bay, or brush against
a bush of Rosemary, or tread upon a tuft of Thyme, or pass through
incense-laden brakes of Cistus, I feel that here is all that is best and
purest and most refined, and nearest to poetry, in the range of faculty
of the sense of smell.
The scents of all these sweet shrubs, many of them at home in dry and
rocky places in far-away lower latitudes, recall in a way far more
distinct than can be done by a mere mental effort of recollection,
rambles of years ago in many a lovely southern land--in the islands of
the Greek Archipelago, beautiful in form, and from a distance looking
bare and arid, and yet with a scattered growth of lowly, sweet-smelling
bush and herb, so that as you move among them every plant seems full of
sweet sap or aromatic gum, and as you tread the perfumed carpet the
whole air is scented; then of dusky groves of tall Cypress and Myrtle,
forming mysterious shadowy woodland temples that unceasingly offer up an
incense of their own surpassing fragrance, and of cooler hollows in the
same lands and in the nearer Orient, where the Oleander grows like the
willow of the north, and where the Sweet Bay throws up great tree-like
suckers of surprising strength and vigour. It is only when one has seen
it grow like this that one can appreciate the full force of the old
Bible simile. Then to find oneself standing (while still on earth) in a
grove of giant Myrtles fifteen feet high is like having a little chink
of the door of heaven opened, as if to show a momentary glimpse of what
good things may be beyond!
Among the sweet shrubs from the nearer of these southern regions, one of
the best for English gardens is _Cistus laurifolius_. Its wholesome,
aromatic sweetness is freely given off, even in winter. In this, as in
its near relative, _C. ladaniferus_, the scent seems to come from the
gummy surface, and not from the body of the leaf. _Caryopteris
Mastacanthus_, the Mastic plant, from China, one of the few shrubs that
flower in autumn, has strongly-scented woolly leaves, something like
turpentine, but more refined. _Ledum palustre_ has a delightful scent
when its leaves are bruised. The wild Bog-myrtle, so common in Scotland,
has almost the sweetness of the true Myrtle, as has also the
broad-leaved North American kind, and the Candleberry Gale (_Comptonia
asplenifolia_) from the same country. The myrtle-leaved Rhododendron is
a dwarf shrub of neat habit, whose bruised leaves have also a
myrtle-like smell, though it is less strong than in the Gales. I wonder
why the leaves of nearly all the hardy aromatic shrubs are of a hard,
dry texture; the exceptions are so few that it seems to be a law.
If my copse were some acres larger I should like nothing better than to
make a good-sized clearing, laying out to the sun, and to plant it with
these aromatic bushes and herbs. The main planting should be of Cistus
and Rosemary and Lavender, and for the shadier edges the Myrtle-leaved
Rhododendron, and _Ledum palustre_, and the three Bog-myrtles. Then
again in the sun would be Hyssop and Catmint, and Lavender-cotton and
Southernwood, with others of the scented Artemisias, and Sage and
Marjoram. All the ground would be carpeted with Thyme and Basil and
others of the dwarfer sweet-herbs. There would be no regular paths, but
it would be so planted that in most parts one would have to brush up
against the sweet bushes, and sometimes push through them, as one does
on the thinner-clothed of the mountain slopes of southern Italy.
Among the many wonders of the vegetable world are the flowers that hang
their heads and seem to sleep in the daytime, and that awaken as the sun
goes down, and live their waking life at night. And those that are most
familiar in our gardens have powerful perfumes, except the Evening
Primrose (_Oenothera_), which has only a milder sweetness. It is vain to
try and smell the night-given scent in the daytime; it is either
withheld altogether, or some other smell, quite different, and not
always pleasant, is there instead. I have tried hard in daytime to get a
whiff of the night sweetness of _Nicotiana affinis_, but can only get
hold of something that smells like a horse! Some of the best of the
night-scents are those given by the Stocks and Rockets. They are sweet
in the hand in the daytime, but the best of the sweet scent seems to be
like a thin film on the surface. It does not do to smell them too
vigorously, for, especially in Stocks and Wallflowers, there is a
strong, rank, cabbage-like under-smell. But in the sweetness given off
so freely in the summer evening there is none of this; then they only
give their very best.
But of all the family, the finest fragrance comes from the small annual
Night-scented Stock (_Matthiola bicornis_), a plant that in daytime is
almost ugly; for the leaves are of a dull-grey colour, and the flowers
are small and also dull-coloured, and they are closed and droop and look
unhappy. But when the sun has set the modest little plant seems to come
to life; the grey foliage is almost beautiful in its harmonious relation
to the half-light; the flowers stand up and expand, and in the early
twilight show tender colouring of faint pink and lilac, and pour out
upon the still night-air a lavish gift of sweetest fragrance; and the
modest little plant that in strong sunlight looked unworthy of a place
in the garden, now rises to its appointed rank and reigns supreme as its
prime delight.