Hello Jerry, thanks for unearthing that thread & adding such a nice story.jerrytheplater wrote: ↑Fri Aug 18, 2023 4:22 pm This is a pretty old thread, but I'll add this in. A friend of mine was a perfumer at a local fragrance company. (...)
My humble addition: Of course the Selenicereus are famous for their fragrance. When I return home late on a rainy summer night, and I ask myself who is baking a cake -- then I know one of them has opened something.
I would describe the smell of Sel.grandiflora & donkelaari as a mixture of vanilla & cocoa penetrating the whole of the room. But when you smell at a flower just as you smell at a rose flower, there is next to nothing.
Autumn last year I learned why in a youtube video of the Sukkulentensammlung Zürich (Zurich Succulent Collection, ZH, Switzerland). Urs Eggli, head of the house & author of a couple of lexicons, said that you have to smell at the flower stalk of the Selenicereius flowers. This is where their smell evaporates. Of course I had to test that this summer -- and it's true. Incredible.
Why should the day-flowering cacti plainly visible also add smell to attract pollinators? The flowers are spectacular enough. I often wish my eyes could see UV light, that should reveal interesting patterns.
I admit that to me there are two "classes" or types of smell of the night-flowering cacti.
The ones smell very nice & sweet, and the others... how do I say that in English... musty? stale? not really rotten, but not that a standard human would stick the nose inside & smile "...aaaaaahhhh...".
In one of David Attenboroughs Films he explains that the sweet smelling ones attract moths & night-flying butterflies, while the "others" attract bats. That's different tastes.
Besides: The Echinopsis subdenudata on my balcony smells not sweet but refreshingly & quite citrusy.
N.
