I love the smell and taste of Liquafruita with garlic. So many childhood memories. Ma caught me swigging it from the bottle once!!!
Some pamphlets that come through the door here smell the same as the ones that accompanied the schools’ radio broadcasts, Travel Talks, Time & Tune and Singing Together. Love it! I always sniff new ones when they come through the door to see if they smell right and to take me back to that happy little village school.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Colour reception is much simpler, based for humans on only 4 colour receptors. How we turn light wavelengths into perceived colours and which, is completely unknown.
There are many thousand aroma and taste receptors, some have chemical groups that only interact with part of the odour-giving groups of a target aroma molecule. All sweetners have a common base smell but differ distinctively: sucrose, glucose, fructose, saccharine, stevia ... I use Lactulose medically; it has a sugary taste, but I can tell when the batch changes. (That will be due to impurities.). The same with food acids, they share a sourness taste but have distinct differences.
By the way, my lemon plant has citrussy leaves, but the flower smell to me is not citrussy, more orange bossom.
location: Surrey Hills, England, ex-woodland acidic sand. "Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
I read somewhere that lemon scented washing up liquid is actually made of oranges. We perceive it a lemon because it's yellow and we're told it's lemon.
I read somewhere that lemon scented washing up liquid is actually made of oranges. We perceive it a lemon because it's yellow and we're told it's lemon.
I am not disagreeing, but it is more likely to be from geraniums, or completely synthetic Limonene. Possibly a mixture.
location: Surrey Hills, England, ex-woodland acidic sand. "Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
My OH perceives purple as orange. When I correct her she agrees they are different but her senses instinctively say ‘orange’ even when logic tells her it’s purple - there is, after all, no orange Salvia Amistad. Whilst it’s true colour perception is simpler, we still see colour as well as perceive scent differently. I can detect, for example, the amount of blue or yellow and varying levels of saturation in a red flower whilst these subtleties escape some others. OTOH I cannot detect myrrh or tea scents.
The interaction of colour, scent, taste, temperature, humidity, expectation, training, exposure, memory etc. is complex enough, add in individual perception and no fragrance is likely to be 100% identical to two different noses.
I agree you can train your nose against a baseline of different notes. I have been doing that ever since I started growing roses and both my (formerly poor) sense of smell and my discernment of different notes have improved immeasurably with practice.
Mountainous Northern Catalunya, Spain. Hot summers, cold winters.
you can train your nose against a baseline of different notes. I have been doing that ever since I started growing roses and both my (formerly poor) sense of smell and my discernment of different notes have improved immeasurably with practice.
To train yourself, you need a sensitive reliable nose, a good scent memory and a good scent vocabulary, and wide experience.
To communicate with others you need another set of skills.
location: Surrey Hills, England, ex-woodland acidic sand. "Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
I lost my sense of smell about 4/5years ago and hadn't realised until I noticed Gertrude Jekyll hadn't any perfume that summer. I still prefer to buy plants which do smell and very occasionally if I stick my nose in a bloom I get a hint of the Scent. I used to be able to tell if someone in the street outside was smoking or if there was a foxes den in the hedgerow, or if the cake in the oven was burning! I understand from ENT that this is unlikely to change so have just had to be resigned to it, and , of course, there are some advantanges.(Not all smells are pleasant).
I can smell rancidity on fried chips where nobody else can, red carnations smell like the seaside, I adore the smell of neem oil, most can't stand it. I detest chemical 'air fresheners' and the like, they make my nose burn.
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Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
There are many thousand aroma and taste receptors, some have chemical groups that only interact with part of the odour-giving groups of a target aroma molecule. All sweetners have a common base smell but differ distinctively: sucrose, glucose, fructose, saccharine, stevia ... I use Lactulose medically; it has a sugary taste, but I can tell when the batch changes. (That will be due to impurities.). The same with food acids, they share a sourness taste but have distinct differences.
By the way, my lemon plant has citrussy leaves, but the flower smell to me is not citrussy, more orange bossom.
"Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
"Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
The interaction of colour, scent, taste, temperature, humidity, expectation, training, exposure, memory etc. is complex enough, add in individual perception and no fragrance is likely to be 100% identical to two different noses.
I agree you can train your nose against a baseline of different notes. I have been doing that ever since I started growing roses and both my (formerly poor) sense of smell and my discernment of different notes have improved immeasurably with practice.
To communicate with others you need another set of skills.
"Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
I used to be able to tell if someone in the street outside was smoking or if there was a foxes den in the hedgerow, or if the cake in the oven was burning!
I understand from ENT that this is unlikely to change so have just had to be resigned to it, and , of course, there are some advantanges.(Not all smells are pleasant).
I detest chemical 'air fresheners' and the like, they make my nose burn.