That Stinks!

Every year at about this time I get a little bit sad. When I go into Home Depot for plumbing parts and see all the paperwhite bulbs,

or page through the Whiteflower farms catalog and see their selection of paperwhites.

You might be wondering why I don't just get some and force them for their sweet little flowers and delightful scent. The answer is that John thinks they smell like cat pee.

I had forced paperwhite bulbs when I was in high school and wanted to continue when I moved to Florida after college. I bought some (that John and I couldn't really afford), placed them in a bowl with stones and water, and happily waited for blossoms. When they did bloom, John walked into the apartment and asked, "What stinks?" I had always found paperwhites' scent delicate and lovely, so how was it possible that they smelled like cat pee to John? It turns out that it's due to a chemical called indole. It's produced naturally by paperwhites and also gardenias, jasmine, tuberose, and orange flowers. Not everyone likes the smell of indole – especially in large amounts. It's found in other things: fecal matter, decaying animals, body odor, and even in vegetables such as broccoli and kale. (So paperwhites might sound less attractive to me.)

Some varieties of paperwhite (the ones whose flowers are more yellow than white like Grand Soleil D’Or and Wintersun) are supposed to have less indole and therefore a lighter and sweeter smell. I've never tried them; most often the bulbs you see at Home Depot or even in the grocery store are from the subspecies Ziva which is high in indole and therefore stinky to some people.

So I'm content to have a beautiful Thanksgiving cactus blooming, a geranium blossoming on the windowsill, and hyacinth bulbs chilling in the refrigerator to force later this year. But sadly, no stinky cat pee flowers are grown here.