Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Pretty picture: Maxillaria tenuifolia

Every year, I think okay, this is the year when I will pay attention to the smells and try to record which flowers have them and which ones don't, and every year, I manage to remember one or two of them, because by the time I'm at the show and remember that I was going to try to keep track of that, I realize that I don't actually have a way of recording that so that I'll remember it, and then there's still the drive back home, and sometimes a trip to Home Depot, and then the uploading of the photos, by which point I've forgotten most of what I'd managed to try to keep in mind about the whole olfactory experience.

Maxillaria tenuifolia got remembered this year because we've seen it before (previously: 2012), and readers left smell-related comments then, so when I saw it again, it was like oh, right, this is supposed to smell like coconut or something. Which I guess it kind of did, but it wasn't as close to coconut as I had imagined it might be. It's possible that some of that is explainable by interference from other scented things -- the venue itself is a garden center, and smells like one, and then there are multiple fragrant orchids around, plus lots of people who may or may not have their own odors, and the aroma situation inevitably winds up in an awfully complicated place.


In any case, definitely scented. And weird-looking besides, both the plant and the flower. (It may help to view the full-sized image.) Seems nice enough. I'm not hinting for someone to send me one, and getting one's not high on my list of priorities, but if I someday wind up in a situation where I come across an available M. tenuifolia, you know, maybe I'll take it.


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