Mystery Plant: Camphor stinkweed, Fleabane, Pluchea camphorata

Yes, it is hot. Time for everyone to take a deep, air-conditioned breath, and figure out ways to deal with the weather. One way is to remember that before long, there will be signs of autumn (so soon?), and eventually everything will be cooling off, with displays of autumnal blooming everywhere. Our Mystery Plant is one of the autumn-bloomers, and it packs an olfactory punch.

Plants around us aren’t always the sweetly-fragrant charmers that the poets would like us to think, no-siree. Various kinds of flowering plants are downright stinky, and of course whatever the scent produced, whether sweet or foul, there is always some biological connection to it. We tend to think that flowers in bloom are always sweet, think roses, gardenias, and Easterlilies. But consider also the various voodoo-lilies (Amorphophallus and relatives), or starfish flowers (the succulent stapeliads), which when in bloom, suggest a dead rat in the vicinity, and tend to attract flies …not such a good idea for an arrangement on your dinner table. The whole idea of floral fragrance presumably involves attracting pollinators, whether the scent is sweet or foul. Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder…or in this case, the smeller. In a sense, various plant groups have evolved strategies to maximize pollination by using whatever kind of attractant is the most effective. It’s a floral version of the modernism “Whatever works!” It’s interesting to know that some fascinating botanical research involves the identification of these various compounds. Floral fragrances can be studied by basically sucking the air (and fragrance) from a flower and then injecting all these fragrances into a special machine — a gas chromatograph — to isolate and identify the various compounds.