Winter fragrance

In these cold, grey days after Christmas, in the depths of winter, any flower is welcome, although I do have some reservations about this one - winter heliotrope Petasites fragrans

 I planted a small cutting  in our front garden many years ago for nostalgic reasons, because it grew on a roadside near my home in Sussex when I was a child. Its creeping underground rhizomes have spread relentlessly outwards, defying attempts to dig it out because it regenerates rapidly from small rhizome fragments left behind. Fortunately, it's confined by two walls and a concrete path, which limits its opportunities from further escape, but I can see why people warn against introducing it into cultivated soil. 

It has become naturalised in many places throughout Britain, moved around in dumped garden soil, around waste tips or where it as been fly-tipped on roadsides.

On the plus side, winter heliotrope has a delightful fragrance, variously described as resembling vanilla, almonds or marzipan, so when it flowers in January I always keep a few inflorescences on the window ledge in a vase. 

It originates from the central Mediterranean region and North Africa and was  introduced into gardens here in 1806, then first recorded in the wild in Middlesex in 1835. My favourite naturalised population is on the edge of the sea cliffs near Noses Point at Seaham on the Durham coast where, on a bright winter's day, it looks wonderful with the North Sea as a backdrop.

Roses, noses and bathtime

It's wild rose time and the most fragrant British species by far is burnet rose Rosa pimpinellifolia. It has a strange distribution here in Country Durham - mostly coastal but with a few inland populations - perhaps because people planted it in their gardens in the past. This one was photographed at Durham Wildlife Trust's Low Barns Nature Reserve.

We live in an age dominated by visual images, especially on the internet, but wild flowers can engage all the senses, and especially the sense of smell. A few years ago I found this book -The Scented Wild Flowers of Britain by Roy Genders - in a second-hand bookshop and it opened up a new dimension in botanising. It's not just flowers that are scented - leaves and roots of many species also have their own distinctive aroma.

The problem is that having reached three score years and five my sense of smell isn't as acute as it once was - and the fragrance of  many species is quite subtle. Just sniffing the flower when its scent is diluted by the passing breeze isn't enough. So that's why I always carry ......

... a small, screw-top plastic tube. If you just put the flower (in this case red clover which has a delicious peppery sweetness) in this enclosed space for a few minutes the volatile fragrance is concentrated in a small volume of air and is very easy to detect. For leaves, crushing them before you put them in the tube releases the scent much more efficiently.

Fragrances famously stimulate the memory and recollection of past experiences. For me the scent of this plant, meadow rue Thalictrum flavum, brings back memories of bathing our children when they were babies, nearly forty years ago. Its flowers have a comforting, slightly antiseptic smell that mimics the fragrance of the brand of baby talcum powder that we used on them. These days I find it quite difficult to detect the smell of the flower in the open air but when I enclose it in the plastic tube for a minute or two it immediately becomes apparent.