Dave Karn wrote: > ....and, > while I find most lily fragrance wonderful on a warm afternoon, true, it can > be overwhelming if from a large bouquet in a closed room. I find it overwhelming in the open garden - in a room or a greenhouse it is intolerable. > > However, I must say that I find your dislike of the fragrance of hyacinth to > be unusually severe. To my nose, the fragrance of hyacinth represents the > very essence of Spring!! I couldn't have a garden without waves of hyacinth. I > will often sit near them just to inhale deeply of that fragrance distilling > itself on the edying currents of air. I do have to say, however, get the > fragrance when the flowers are fresh because, like a good brie when mature, the odor > deterioates to intolerable as the flowers fade. I restrained myself on the subject of hyacinth odour. I appreciate hyacinths in the garden display, and indeed have planted quite a few here at Colesbourne, but just walking along the path, nose nearly 6 feet above them, the smell was only too apparent. Fortunately, in cheese, the stronger and worse the smell, the better the flavour usually is. Forget the pussy-footed brie, try some of the red-rinded Belgian ones, with what can only be called (politely) a faecal odour, but heavenly flavour! There is an English one called Stinking Bishop, much the same. I must try Narcissus 'Fragrant Rose' - sounds delightful. There is a snowdrop, G. plicatus 'Ispahan' that smells of old roses, rather delightfully. For snowdrop fragrance 'S. Arnott' is hard to beat; on a warm February day the big patch here of some10,000 flowering plants wafts the perfume all around - a lovely heather honey scent. John Grimshaw