Some Science Regarding a GOOD SMELLING A. bulbifer

From: ted.held at us.henkel.com on 2007.06.28 at 12:39:27(15883) Poor Julius. Nobody believes him. Except me. The reason I put Julius's opinion on the credible list is that he has a track record here of careful and considered observations. Further, he seems to have an abiding interest in recording the minutiae of aroid growing for the advancement of knowledge about these plants. This he does because it is his ethic and his, might I say, mania. As others have discussed, smell is one of those dumb senses in people. That is, we do smell, but our smell sensitivity is a weak and pitiful thing compared to a lion, a beetle, a prairie dog, or a vulture. Many of us have personal experiences of scents that are pleasant to us, which at the same time are cloying or downright repulsive to others. But look at what evidence we have before us. We have Julius insisting that there is a type of bulbifer that is good smelling. I presume here that this judgment was made by him in reference to other experiences with bulbifers that smelled bad. What that does, if I am right in my assumption, is remove the person-to-person variation in odor sensitivity. What we can't rule out by this alone is whether Julius's experiencing the good smell was merely a snapshot of a range of smells emitted by bulbifer over the bloom period. In other words. maybe bulbifer emits different odors depending on the age of the flower. Let's also assume for a moment that Lord P. insists that all bulbifers smell bad and that this is evidence that Julius is crazy. Could it not be that Lord P.'s experiences are deficient in experiencing the range of odors emitted by bulbifer cultivars because he has not yet come across one of the good-smelling ones? This seems most believable. If we also assume that Lord P. is another experienced and astute observer of aroids, we can probably eliminate the idea that smell differences between the young and older bulbifer flowers is the explanation, Surely, Lord P. would have detected that over his years of experience. So, what we conclude is that Julius (and the others reporting good smells) have probably experienced the odor of another form of bulbifer. That is a perfectly credible theory. The path toward resolution of this dispute is to provide the naysayers with plants of the alternately-odiferous bulbifer so that the skeptics can experience the good smells for themselves. After all that I'll bet the community will come to the conclusion that there are at least two odor clones of bulbifer and that Julius is a truthful person. Whether he is crazy or not will hinge on other considerations. +More Ted._______________________________________________ Aroid-L mailing list Aroid-L@www.gizmoworks.com http://www.gizmoworks.com/mailman/listinfo/aroid-l

From: "Julius Boos" <ju-bo at msn.com> on 2007.06.28 at 22:07:02(15890) Reply-To : Discussion of aroids Sent : Thursday, June 28, 2007 12:39 PM To : Discussion of aroids Subject : [Aroid-l] Some Science Regarding a GOOD SMELLING A. bulbifer Dear Ted, Thanks. I admit openly and almost on a daily basis, to being COMPLETELY crazy, but the problem generally hinges on people around me getting the defination of 'crazy' confused with the word 'stupid'. Their grave error, and their loss. Basically, and at this point, I move that, as gentile, civilized plant-loving folk, we just take the next logical step and completely REMOVE the genus Amorphophallus from the genera of the Araceae (ugly, stinking plants, ALL of them!!), and bar anyone (even the astute and experienced observers) who may DARE to post a note concerning these most vile forms of plant life, which we now deem are no longer aroids, from this list! Would someone, ANYONE please send a tuber of the GOOD-smelling A. bulbifer to my friend Lord P.?!?!? :--) Julius +More >>Poor Julius. Nobody believes him. Except me. The reason I put Julius's >>opinion on the credible list is that he has a track record here of careful >>and considered observations. Further, he seems to have an abiding interest >>in recording the minutiae of aroid growing for the advancement of >>knowledge about these plants. This he does because it is his ethic and >>his, might I say, mania. As others have discussed, smell is one of those dumb senses in people. That is, we do smell, but our smell sensitivity is a weak and pitiful thing compared to a lion, a beetle, a prairie dog, or a vulture. Many of us have personal experiences of scents that are pleasant to us, which at the same time are cloying or downright repulsive to others. But look at what evidence we have before us. We have Julius insisting that there is a type of bulbifer that is good smelling. I presume here that this judgment was made by him in reference to other experiences with bulbifers that smelled bad. What that does, if I am right in my assumption, is remove the person-to-person variation in odor sensitivity. What we can't rule out by this alone is whether Julius's experiencing the good smell was merely a snapshot of a range of smells emitted by bulbifer over the bloom period. In other words. maybe bulbifer emits different odors depending on the age of the flower. Let's also assume for a moment that Lord P. insists that all bulbifers smell bad and that this is evidence that Julius is crazy. Could it not be that Lord P.'s experiences are deficient in experiencing the range of odors emitted by bulbifer cultivars because he has not yet come across one of the good-smelling ones? This seems most believable. If we also assume that Lord P. is another experienced and astute observer of aroids, we can probably eliminate the idea that smell differences between the young and older bulbifer flowers is the explanation, Surely, Lord P. would have detected that over his years of experience. So, what we conclude is that Julius (and the others reporting good smells) have probably experienced the odor of another form of bulbifer. That is a perfectly credible theory. The path toward resolution of this dispute is to provide the naysayers with plants of the alternately-odiferous bulbifer so that the skeptics can experience the good smells for themselves. After all that I'll bet the community will come to the conclusion that there are at least two odor clones of bulbifer and that Julius is a truthful person. Whether he is crazy or not will hinge on other considerations. Ted.<< _______________________________________________ Aroid-L mailing list Aroid-L@www.gizmoworks.com http://www.gizmoworks.com/mailman/listinfo/aroid-l

From: "Wilbert Hetterscheid" <hetter at xs4all.nl> on 2007.06.29 at 04:35:56(15895) Gentle folks, First off, Julius and I are both crazy insane persons, so I am not different from him there. That's why, thus far, nobody had to take me serious in my olfactory duel with Julius. However, Ted has started to make this a serious issue (which it already was.........). Yes, smells in Amorphophallus species sometimes vary in one inflorescence over the flowering period. However, the deviating scents are usually at the end of the flowering and very weak compared to the peak scent, whiich is the one we usually percieve. Am. bulbifer is a multi-faceted monster in many respects. Quite some years ago it seemed that just one type was available but nowadays there's quite some new clones coming in from India. Brian's photo is a case in point. And, yes, I actually DO believe that there may be clones with a deviating smell. In our (Geoff Kite from Kew and myself) work on the chemical composition of Amorph smells (see e.g. Phytochemistry 46[1], 1997) we usually had only one inflorescence to ckeck per species but in the few cases where we had more, differences in especially the percentage of chemicals was observed. In general the scent was not that different though with different percentages. Sometimes differences are noticable with range from the emitting plant. I noticed that e.g. at a distance, Arum creticum smells quite sweet but close to the spadix I am reminded that there are some foul-smelling components present too. +More So, in conclusion, I do believe in good-smelling clones of bulbifer. The thing is that the overwhelming presence of dimethyl-trisulphide pricipally results in a bad gaseous heavily upsetting scent but even I think that at a longer distance there is some reminiscence of sweetness. It may be that the balance of this trisulphide with small amounts of two other sulphides (our observation) could well be varying in clones and that one or more of the compositions may have a much stronger sweetness to it. If anyone has a tuber of this good smelling one to spare, I'd be happy to nurse it and experience it myself. Cheerio, Lord P. _______________________________________________ Aroid-L mailing list Aroid-L@www.gizmoworks.com http://www.gizmoworks.com/mailman/listinfo/aroid-l

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