T
The Book of 10 Neat Things
his is not a gardening book. This is a book designed to wow, astound and amaze all gardeners, even make you laugh from
time to time. The Book of 10 Neat Things is a collection of some of the weekly e-newsletters my daughter, Shauna, and I have written over the past two to three years. We had always thought about collaborating on a book and be-
cause so many of our e-newsletter readers told us that they collect the emails and file them in binders or folders, we had a Eureka! moment and The Book of 10 Neat Things was born. What is “10 Neat Things”? Well, it could be just about any topic
related to the garden or our natural world and each piece is com- prised of odd facts that you may not know or perhaps did know but never thought about in quite the way we present them. For example, did you know that sparrows mate for life, but that
a study of hatchling DNA showed that Mr. Sparrow is not always the natural papa? Or that sparrows are very smart and have learned how to trigger the doors at supermarkets so that they can get inside to enhance their already astonishing appetite for over 830 foods? Did you know that petunias stop putting out scent once they
are pollinated? That lilacs live 200 years? Or that the doggie stain in your lawn could come from the high protein diet you are feed- ing the pup, which increases the nitrogen levels? Did you know that female snakes can keep the male sperm stored and inactive for years after mating? That dropping the “h” in herb is an American affectation and that “real” English pronounces the “h” sound. These are just a few of the arcane things you will learn from The
Book of 10 Neat Things. And you can keep learning new things by going to our website and signing up for the e-newsletter which is absolutely free! The book costs $24.95.
– Dorothy Dobbie 10 Neat Things about SCENT
1. Do bees have noses? Not exactly, but they do detect odour through receptors in their antennae. Various insects have sensory receptors in their shells or in their legs. Many insects have highly developed olfactory systems. 2. Odour plumes. An odour plume is a scented waft from flowers that attracts bees and other insects. The plume can reach bees a full kilometre or more away. Much has been made of communication by honeybees through their waggle dances, which are believed by some entomologists to convey precise details of a nectar source from a returning forager to foragers in the hive. Other entomologists, though, believe that the dance communicates limited information at best and bees follow an odour plume to a nectar source. An ex- periment has indicated that a bee, having found an odourless sugar source, is unable to recruit other bees to the source. Apparently this leads to some heated discussions at entomology conferences. (Boy! It would be fun to be a fly on the wall at one of those!) 3. Where did the smell go? Flower scent is an advertisement that a bloom is open for business, offering free nectar to pollinating crea- tures. Pollinator-attractant scents come from volatile oils produced in the petals and leaves of flowers, and that production takes energy. In general, a flower won’t produce scent until it is sufficiently ma- ture for pollination. Then, once the bloom is fully pollinated, it is no longer (or only barely) fragrant. 4. Disappearing scents. Plenty of plant hybridization in the last hundred years was done for bigger blooms, more vibrant colour, more petals and longer shelf life (for cut flowers), while less at- tention was paid to scent. Consequently, many modern cultivars lack the wonderful fragrance of their species cousins. Dismay is sometimes expressed over this, but the reason seems apparent; why would sterile hybrids produce scent? 5. Lingering scents. Some genera have undergone substantial hy- bridization without giving up fragrance. Lilacs are remarkable for this characteristic. 6. Complex floral scents. Complexity of floral scent varies from species to species. A simple scent, such as a snapdragon’s, is com-
28 • Foodie 2012
posed of as few as seven different volatile oils. A very complex scent, such as an orchid’s, has as many as 100 volatile oils involved. 7. Bad smells. Several plants produce unpleasant odours. In some cases it’s to keep creatures away, but in others it is a question of taste. Carrion flowers smell like rotting flesh, with the goal of attracting scavenging flies as pollinators. The carrion flowers are not of a single genus; rather they are foul-smelling species from various genera. The blooms tend to be tropical, outrageously huge (the Titan arum can reach almost 10 feet high), and merci- fully rare. 8. Ginkgoes. You rarely come across the female ginkgo in Canada – except perhaps at the furthest corner of an arboretum – for reasons other than its marginal hardiness at Zone 3. It is because the fruit smells like rancid butter. Really rancid butter. Butyric acid is the culprit. The fatty acid is found in several plant oils and in vomit. Nonetheless, the nuts are prized food in China and Japan. Perhaps ginkgoes originally produced butyric acid as a strategy for keeping animals from eating the fruit; obviously, the strategy failed to keep humans away but the tree won out in the end, being cultivated spe- cifically for the fruit. It’s a strange world. 9. Dangerous smells. Some scents can induce asthma attacks, coughing fits and headaches in sensitive individuals, and some can even provoke an anaphylactic reaction. Flower scents that seem to cause the most trouble are hyacinth and stargazer lilies. Lavender is also known to induce a headache in some people while being a headache soother for others. 10. Who smells. In general, women have a stronger sense of smell than men, so a piece of advice for the gents: don’t accuse your wife of being over-sensitive when she tells you it’s time to take out the garbage or have a shower. There are some people who are hypersen- sitive to scent, a disorder known as hyperosmia. Reduced sensitivity is hyposmia and complete lack of sensitivity is anosmia. Folks who detect scents that aren’t there are phantosmic. Those with dysos- mia don’t smell things the way others do – a disorder analogous to colour blindness.
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