Ever since I read the book Tales of the Rose Tree by Jane Brown and learned that the earliest rhododendrons, brought to England from Nepal and China by plant explorers, were fragrant, I’ve been searching for a fragrant rhododendron. Seattle is rhododendron city; there’s a rhodie on every block, practically every yard. It’s our state flower after all. But, despite sniffing every rhodendron I passed, I couldn’t find one with any scent. That’s partly because, as with other highly hybridized flowers, the scent has been bred out of them in favor of big blossoms and vivid colors.
Then on May 1, when I was leaving the Museum of History and Industry after a great reunion of Nearby History participants, I smelled the most intoxicating fragrance. I looked around and the only blossoms in sight were on a huge rhododendron with large white flowers. So I thought I would try sniffing the blossoms. Ah! A heavenly aroma. A truly fragrant rhododendron.
A few days later, I was celebrating an impromptu May ceremony with some friends, tossing wreaths into the lagoons at the end of the Arboretum, when I saw another white rhododendron, right next to the gatehouse that leads into Broadmoor. I pointed it out and we went over to smell it. Again, that intoxicating fragrance, a lot like honeysuckle. We stuck our noses deep into the blossoms to inhale the scent and when we raised our heads, there were smudges of pollen on our noses and sticky pistils. The flower had lured us, hapless pollinators, to spread its seed around. A perfect ending for May Day.
The photograph above is not either of the bushes described but it may be the same cultivar. This is Polar Bear and it’s a fragrant rhododendron offered for sale by Banwy Valley Nursery in the UK.
The Berkeley Horticultural Nursery has a wonderful list of fragrant rhododendron cultivars.
I was especially fascinated by the distinctions made in describing their scents. Bill Massey is very fragrant with cinnamon/chocolate overtones. Fragrantissimum smells of honeysuckle and nutmeg. And Fragrantissimum Improved has “an almost tropical fragrance with nuances of jasmine and cloves.” McNabbi smells like nutmeg and Mi Amor has hints of musk and tarragon. Paul Molinari has the scent of wild honeysuckle (I have a feeling this is the cultivar I enjoyed) while Scott’s Valentine smells like jasmine. It’s enough to make me run out and buy some rhododendrons for my garden.
One thing this flower project is doing for me is making me fall in love with flowers I always disdained (like the bergenia and the big showy, scentless rhodies).
These beautiful photographs were taken by my friend, Michael, who accompanied me on both my first and my most recent visits to Schreiner's Gardens just outside of Salem, Oregon.
We went on Mother's Day weekend this year and because it's been so cloudy and cool, most of the bearded irises were not yet in bloom. So most of the display iris in this area, were the dwarf irises, which I had never seen before. I wandered up and down the aisles smelling irises and found many new favorite fragrances.
There's also an area where you can buy plants. This photo shows me in the background in my "cat hat" (my daughter makes them) and a beautiful columbine in the foreground. I bought one like this for my garden.
Schreiners also has a beautiful iris garden where samples of every kind of iris are planted in rows and clearly labeled, so you can see how they grow. There's also a section (as shown in this photo) which was full of lilacs and rhododenrons in bloom. The last picture shows me in front of a magnificent yellow rhododendron.
