A rose by any other name..
Published by butercup on Friday, September 30, 2005 at 8:30 am.. apparently, wouldn't smell as sweet, well not any more.
I've long suspected that ornamental roses, the ones you buy in the shops when you're apologising for not getting a better present, smell much less sweet than those you chop off someone's rosebush as you walk past. Finally someone got a grant to study the stinkiness of flowers, and discovered the biochemical reason behind it. Apparently the colour compounds come from the same precursors as the scent compounds, and hence if you dick with one, you dick with the other. So more colour=less smell, etc.
Thanks to BoingBoing now we all know the truth.
Another exciting piece of news is that we have grass!! Real grass (well probably highly genetically engineered, or at least cross-bred). It's allegedly engineered to cope well with the conditions in our backyard: i.e. a total of 2 hours of indirect sun per day as well as the everpresent drought. I'm looking forward to the weekend when I will be able to finally see the results of all DTM's hard work landscaping while he's been an otherwise jobless bum.
When we eventually cut the grass, I wonder if it will still smell like cut grass or if it will have lost its smell too (being genetically engineered).