Welcome to You Ask Andy

Marty Stokes, age 8, of Louisville, Kentucky, for his question:

What makes a flower's sweet smell?

Roses have their own special scents, so do tangy marigolds and sweet little violets. Each flower has its own particular perfume, different from all the others. It is made from a secret recipe and stored in tiny pockets inside the flowery petals. A flower's perfume tends to evaporate, then it mingles and spreads through the air. Perhaps the flowers create their sweet smells to attract bees and other friendly insects.

People who work in labs use chemicals to create all sorts of different substances. But the greatest chemists in the world are not people at all. They are plants. Any green plant can use ordinary sunlight to make its basic food from air and watery chemicals from the soil. It can remodel its basic food to make all the other chemicals it needs to grow and multiply. Flowering plants also use secret chemical recipes to create their sweet smells. So do many trees and shy little herbs.

During the daylight hours, a green plant is busy making its basic food. This big job stops when the sun sets. But all sorts of other chemical wonders continue on through the night. The basic sugary food is made into tough walls for new cells, starches and proteins and other substances to fill the boxy new cells. And certain plants use some of their chemicals to create their personal perfumes. As a rule, these are light oils blended with fragrant ingredients.

Even delicate flower petals are made of boxy little cells. But here there are tiny pockets where the sweet scented oil is stored. Because this oil is light, or volatile, it tends to evaporate. Then it changes to a sweet smelling blend of gases. It seeps through the petals and mingles with the air. Soft breezes spread it around, far and wide. Aen the sweet scent reaches our noses, we know that a rose or some other flower is in bloom.

The sweetest smells in the world are made by plants. But not all of them are created for flowers. Pine trees create tangy scented oils and stuff them inside their spikey needles. They also add their scents to the gummy resins in their wood. Many smallish plants create other wonderful scents, though you hardly notice their little flowers.

Most of the shy garden herbs add perfumes to their leaves and stems. Some are mints, with refreshing scents tinged with faint whiffs of lemon or pineapple. One is bright green parsley, smelling like a fresh ocean breeze. Many other fragrant herbs are weeds    many sweet smelling wild flowers that grow in meadows and by the roads.

Nobody could count all the different smells in the plant world. Each is made from a plant's own secret recipe. The sweet scents of flowers can be used to make expensive perfume. But Andy claims that his herb garden smells even sweeter. Besides, these useful plants can add delicious flavors to dull dishes. Some of them even make certain foods easier to digest    and each one is different.

 

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