Discover the Magic of Scent This Spring: Explore Flowers Like Never Before

“It feels like biting into a fresh lychee sprinkled with lemon juice, surrounded by hints of geranium, rose, and a touch of blackcurrant. Delicious!” With her nose deep in a Soulange magnolia blossom (Magnolia x soulangeana), perfumer Sophie Labbé breathes in with delight. Next to her, agronomist, ecologist, and landscape architect Giulio Giorgi encourages students from the Paris School of Horticulture to do the same.

“Some are fragrant, others not. Pick flowers that are slightly open. They form real chambers that you should delve your nose into.” Up close, it’s impossible to ignore the smooth, glossy petals, imagined as crisp as endives. Then, close your eyes, abstract yourself from the birdsong and the deep blue of the April sky, and let the cool floral freshness wash over you.

Honeyed, almondy, lemony, coumarin-like — reminiscent of freshly cut hay — green or animalistic… This olfactory journey is what Giulio Giorgi offers in his book (2025, Nez Editions). In it, you won’t find rare and expensive plants favored by the greatest perfumers. Instead, Giorgi presents 52 species from gardens, wilds, or wastelands that thrive off the beaten path, categorized by their seasonal scents. “I wanted to broaden the possibilities,” explains the author.

In a garden nestled in the Bois de Vincennes, on a slope, the bright yellow flowers of the European gorse (Ulex europaeus), brightening the gray-green tangle of toxic thorns, emit a delightful scent of cream and coconut. This legume from the bean family, thriving on very poor soils, is a significant food source for pollinators. “The flowers are edible; you can sprinkle them in your salads for a tropical touch,” Giorgi savors.

For the ecologist, these scents demand a broader view of the plant and its relationships with other living beings. “Plants don’t flirt with each other as we might, but instead charm intermediaries, the pollinators, who carry out fertilization for them. And what is the common language among beings that are utterly different? Scent. It’s magical.”

80 to 90% of flowering plants are pollinated by animals, primarily insects. To entice their winged partners, plants unleash a burst of creativity. More than 1,700 molecules have been identified in the scents they emit. Each has refined its strategy: roses emit their finest fragrances in the morning, while the Night Blooming Jasmine (Cestrum nocturnum) only releases its aroma in the dark. “Its pollinators are moths. The scent is much more intense because it cannot rely on the sun’s warmth to help spread its fragrant molecules,” Giorgi explains.

Some pairings are quite steamy. The orchid genus Ophrys mimics the scent of female bees to attract males, which luxuriously rub against the flower, mistaking it for a mate. The scents of the yellow clusters of Juliana barberry (Berberis julianae) evoke bleach and… sperm. “These spermatic odors are widespread in the flower world,” comments the ecologist with a smirk. “You find them in chestnut flowers, with a more honeyed aspect.”

But aromatic molecules are not just for crafting love stories. “Do you smell that? It’s wonderful, very powerful,” illustrates the ecologist, crushing a tiny, wrinkled berry of Zanthoxylum, releasing sharp notes of pepper and citrus. “The seeds and leaves are packed with protective essential oils. They are real bombs against parasites, which they discourage and poison.”

For us, non-pollinating humans, smells are a backdoor into new relationships with the plant world. At the end of the tour, Giulio Giorgi takes great pleasure in asking people to smell the snowdrop. “Nobody knows it’s fragrant because it’s close to the ground and nobody wants to bend down that far,” he chuckles. “To smell a flower is to enter into the intimacy of the plant. We stop, we get closer. This proximity provides insights that escape us if we merely photograph the plant from afar with our phone.”

This approach is also much more sensitive, even emotional, towards plants and the environment. Originating from Northern Italy, the landscape designer carries with him the smell of the tulips from his grandmother’s garden — which leave the nose dusted with bright yellow pollen — and the springs of his native region — a unique bouquet of blooming ash and locust trees. On the gray days of February, when spirits are low, he finds refuge with the winter honeysuckle (Lonicera fragrantissima), whose small white flowers emit a Mediterranean scent of citrus and lemongrass. “It’s my little sun, a smell of summer,” he smiles.

These scents forge bonds of affection and companionship with plants, encouraging us to cherish and protect the places where we live. “The sense of smell is inherently respectful and non-violent, it does not harm the plants,” he adds.

Our senses of smell are also highly political. “In this historical moment where sight predominates, we have developed a very precise vocabulary to describe what is visual. However, for the olfactory, there is still much to be invented,” the ecologist rejoices. He sees in this creative exercise an opportunity to free botany from a burdensome colonial past.

“Take this Edgeworthia chrysantha, he illustrates, pointing to a paper bush with golden inflorescences and honeyed fragrances. It was named after the Western researcher who described it [Michael Pakenham Edgeworth]. But it had been known and utilized for centuries in China and Japan!” Developing other ways to describe and name plants based on their scents could help transcend this approach.

Yet, this world of scents with such broad prospects is not immune to the ecological crisis. Exhaust fumes and industrial odors have profoundly altered our olfactory environments. “Researchers in literature have noticed that plant scents, once prevalent in writings, have gradually disappeared with the industrial revolution as writers were less exposed to them,” reports Giulio Giorgi.

Pollution attacks the scents themselves: fine particles absorb odor molecules, while pesticides and antibiotics destroy the bacteria living on flowers, enhancing their scents.

All the more reason to reinvite fragrances into our lives, starting in the garden. “We are taught to think of garden architecture around visual games, full and empty spaces, and pretty color compositions,” regrets the landscape designer, who also invites researchers to venture into the largely unexplored continent of scents. “When the leaves of this caramel tree fall in autumn, they release maltol, a molecule with the scent of cotton candy, praline, and sugar, which makes your mouth water,” he recounts, pointing to a small tree with heart-shaped leaves. “Why does the plant do this? Mystery.”