Return to winter requires something very tropical

Our return to the upper Midwest took us from shirt sleeve weather to severely cold weather rather suddenly; the car's temperature gauge just kept going down.  On a few occasions TPP has returned from the full-fledged tropics to mid winter and it is a very unnice transition.  At any rate here is a very tropical thing a Ylang Ylang tree (there is also a vine with the same common name)(Caranga odorata) in the custard apple family. This is a very tropical scent, sort of a heavy, strongly floral odor, and indeed the flowers are used in perfumery.  This is a family that TPP rather likes, and it just smells tropical. The flowers have rather thick curled tepals probably 3 whorls of 3 if remembered correctly, and in full bloom their odor is almost intoxicating and their odor is strongest at night, which you notice immediately if you walk under one.  It was very green in the Florida keys and very tropical; the contrast with local conditions is stark.  

Friday Fabulous Flower - White butterfly ginger

It's been quite awhile since the last FFF. This plant may have been featured before, but so what?  TPP knew the second he entered the greenhouse that this plant was in flower because of its fragrance, a very perfumed, somewhat heavy fragrance, but quite lovely and one of the best smelling flowers in our collection.  The butterfly ginger (Hedychium coronarium) stands about 1.5 m tall so you don't have to stoop over to look at or smell the flowers. Wish we could introduce the scratch your monitor screen and smell technology. Students in economic botany extract the fragrance by harvesting the new flowers each morning, slicing them lengthwise, and placing them cut side down on a layer of highly purified vegetable fat (i.e., Crisco) in a shallow covered dish (i.e. Petri). After several days the fat becomes impregnated with the fragrance because like many fragrance molecules they are lipid soluble so they dissolve into the fat to be released upon mild heating like rubbing between you fingers or on your skin behind your ear. You can do this with any fragrant flower as a nice kid/garden activity. The process is called enfleurage, a really old perfume technique.

Ubiquitous Tropical Flora

UTF is short-hand for a set of common tropical ornamentals that have been moved around the world such that you expect to see them virtually everywhere. A relative sent the Phactor a set of pictures from Hawaii because they were so excited about the plants they saw there, but not a one was native, not a one belonged there. Still some of them are quite wonderful, but maybe none has a more beautiful flower or floral fragrance than frangipani (Plumeria rubra). The specimen in our glasshouse, now in full bloom, has yellow-centered creamy white flowers; other varieties have pink to rose colored flowers. Note that the corolla lobes for a pinwheel and they are so twisted in the bud. This is a tell-tale for members of the dogbane family (now part of a lineage with the milkweeds to whom they are closely related). And frangipani does smell wonderful. My students capture the fragrance by placing several sliced open fresh floral tubes on a layer of purified vegetable fat ("Crisco") in a petri dish, covering it overnight at room temp, and then replacing the flowers each day for a few days to a week. This is a method of capturing delicate scents is called enfleurage and it can be used with rose petals or orange blossoms or butterfly ginger, whatever. After a few days the fat will be quite well scented, and by rubbing the fat on your skin, or even between your fingers, it releases the fragrance. This can be a pretty fun, low-cost activity for kids, but in the case of frangipani, do take care with the milky sap.