Garden mysteries

[mme_hardy]

 I was trying to identify a Victorian houseplant, "musk";  readers of Stalky and Company will remember that our heroes smashed the loathsome King's plant.  Musk was notorious for its wonderful fragrance; therefore I must acquire  it for my garden.    I did a lot of Googling and eventually decided the particular musk, based on scale, had to be Mimulus moschatus.    I couldn't find it for sale commercially, and the scientific writeups didn't mention the fragrance.

A little more Googling and I found out why.   Sometime before the nineteen-teens, commercial musk stopped smelling.    There are several reputable references in both the scientific literature and in gardening essays, all of which agree that musk used to be ubiquitous in windowboxes and gardens, but that the writers hadn't smelled it in years, even though the plants continued to be available.   Nobody's found a scented wild musk, either.   The plants live on, but the fragrance is unattainable.

Scientists' best guess is that the original musk collected from the wild was a rare scented variant, now, as far as we know, extinct.  The nurserymen who were propagating musk somehow selected for a scentless strain, probably by emphasizing some other plant quality, and within a generation or two, the scent gene was lost in cultivation as well.

Comments

[movingfinger]

With a little more citation/documentation, this would make a lovely Atlas Obscura piece.

[rinue]

That's exactly what I was thinking and the reason I came to the comments section.

And also to say that I enjoyed the entry for what it is currently. I love this entry with all my heart.

[athenais]

But that is fascinating! I had no idea.

[genarti]

Oh, this is fascinating!

[heliopausa]

How strange! It sounds apocalyptic, in a very minor watercolour way.

[resonant.livejournal.com]

That's very interesting - I'd think it would be encoded in multiple spots, so it might change but not disappear completely.

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

It seems to have! I don't understand why not one nurseryman spotted the initial scentless shipment and complained.. The only thing I can figure is that there was only one person selling seed, that nobody was growing their own?!?!

Or zombies. I blame zombies.