Todich Floral Design Blog

Most of us can recognize the scent of a rose or a dandelion from afar. Science might have a hand in changing this fact. Shakespeare’s famous quote, “ That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” may not ring true for all time.

Researchers at the University of Florida, have found a way to chance the scent of a flower. The genes that control the chemicals that make up the scent of a flower have been isolated. This means that the different compounds of a flowers scent can be increased or decreased, making it possible to create different fragrances.

Flower breeders have mainly worked on changing the appearance of flowers, changing their size, colour and the length of the blooming period. Scent has not been addressed this closely.

Due to this breeding of larger, enduring and colourful flowers, it appears that unintentionally flowers with a weaker scent have been selected, and many flowers are losing the strength of their scent.

In the future it might be possible to choose flowers not only according to appearance, but in terms of scent as well. We might soon be bringing vanilla scented flowers! Or an entire wedding could be designed not only according to one colour scheme but its scent as well. If you are planning an event this is something you do not have to worry about, and Todich Floral Design, will make design and decoration all that much more simple.

Another interesting the research team made was that, flowers like petunias release their scent from their petals. The scent is only released once the petals have opened.

Studies are set to continue, in an effort to set the scents of flowers, without affecting the appearance of the flower.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 at 11:03 am and is filed under Ecological, Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.