Why do Flowers have Fragrance?
Why do Flowers have Fragrance?
Whenever we think of flowers, first thing that comes to the mind is the smell apart from others such as colors, shapes etc. Even when you pass thru a garden, the fragrance of flowers completely engulfs us. Nature has instilled flowers with beauty, charisma, colors, fragrance and nectar. Insects get pulled towards flowers and they sit on them and when they fly off they carry with them pollen grains to other flowers. This interchanging of pollen grains help in cross pollination of flowers as a result of which seeds are produced. This is how plants and trees multiply on their own.
What attracts insects to flowers, is their fragrance. This in turn helps in pollination through the insects. If it weren’t for the fragrance, insects would never sit on the flowers. Different flowers contain oils that give them a specific fragrance. As and when the oils evaporate, these fragrances with them spread in the air and that’s how they attract insects. Perfumes, soaps, shampoo’s are also made from these oils once they are extracted from flowers. Even certain herbs and medicines etc are made by extracting these fragrant oils in the flowers.
Every flowering plant will give off a different scene. This is due to their biological structure and chemistry. Right from the soil and they methods they are harvested, each flower will give off a smell depending on these conditions. Plants exhibit their scent output to high levels only during the time when the flowers are ready for pollination. They usually maximize their outputs during the day and are primarily pollinated by bees or butterflies and those plants that exhibit their scent during the night times are usually pollinated by bats and moths. During flower development, newly opened and small flowers, which are not ready to function as pollen donors, produce fewer scents and are less likely to be attracted towards pollinators than older flowers. Once a flower has been sufficiently pollinated, changes to the floral bouquet lead to a lower attractiveness of these flowers and help to direct pollinators to unpollinated flowers instead, thereby maximizing the reproductive success of the plant.
Flowering plants exude chemicals in flowers which evaporate into the thin air and produce their own unique fragrances. When you order flowers online, there is a good chance that the bouquet that is delivered to you will exhibit some sort of a fragrance. These could be sweet smelling to sometimes even mildly pungent. Flower bouquets in vases sometimes deliver a mixture of smells which is due to the fact that they are in open waters in the vase which also mix with the foliage and other flowers which give off a mixed smell after a couple of days if the water in the vase has not been changed. When you send flowers online to someone and you want to send something that has a sweet smell, consider flowers such as Oriental Lilies, Peonies, Sweet Alyssum, Tube Roses, Lavender, Iris, Hyacinth, Lily of the Valley to name a few which give off a nice smell and if kept in a small room with air conditioner, it can really fill up the whole room in no time. These serve well for even small toilets if you place just a few stems of these fresh flowers. Even certain foliage such as eucalyptus leaves, exude a strong fragrance that is liked by most. When you order a bouquet that has a mixture of these kinds of foliage and flowers that give off a fragrance, the end result can be quite dramatic and pleasing!
