This Week's Mystery Plant

Not many things could be finer, here in Carolina, or anywhere else, as far as wonderful fragrance. This is a plant that is now beginning to unfold its marvelous flowers, which can give off an amazingly sweet fragrance. A stand of these in your garden on a warm spring evening is something to invite your friends over for. For dessert.

This is a shrub that is native to the Southeast, and which is fairly common, in many places from northern Virginia down through lower Mississippi. It likes to grow in rich woods, and often in the shade. Just about every part of this plant is fragrant: the bark, the leaves, and of course, the flowers. Funny thing is, the fragrance can vary widely from plant to plant in a given population, and then even from season to season.

Its deciduous leaves are egg-shaped and somewhat pointed, usually scratchy above, and softly downy beneath, although this is variable, too. The flowers, which are somewhat remindful of miniature magnolia blossoms, are typically maroon and reddish, sometimes varying to purple or even greenish. (In 1872, the famous Harvard botanist Asa Gray referred to the "purplish flowers" as "lurid". I guess it depends on your meaning of the word "lurid".) In fact, the flowers fit into a syndrome that some of the botanists in my department are actively studying now: reddish-brown flowers, opening in the spring, that are heavily fragrant, and which attract a number of different kinds of pollinators.

The fragrance of the flowers has said to resemble strawberry, pineapple, ripe banana, and even applesauce. Depending on the plant observed, the fresh flowers are so fragrant that they have been used commonly as a sachet for the linen drawer. Tucked, by a lady, into an embroidered handkerchief, or held alone, they made a wonderful nosegay in a refined society. Held even closer, perhaps slipped into soft, skin-warmed areas near the neck, the flowers provided a marvelous counterpoint to the offending odors of the world, and eventually bringing us the name "bubby rose" or "bubby bush" (or even -gasp!- "bosom bush") to this old-time favorite. (Photo by Linda Lee.)

Photo by Linda Lee