The Scent of Spring 2011

The first day I smelled the scent of spring in 2011 was Monday, January 10.

In the past I've always associated it with an unusually warm and sunny winter day but Monday it was snowing in Seattle: soft, clumpy flakes drifting down from the sky on and off all day long, leaving a frosting of white on the grass and car windows.

Still when I left work in the afternoon, there was that piercing sweet scent that I immediately identified as sweet box (sarcococcus humilis, I believe, though I am a little confused by my sarococcus species).

The scent is hard to describe but almost everyone describes it as piercing. For instance, I found this blog post by Barbara Wilde who gardens in Paris and found it wafting out of Parc Monceau. She describes it as powerful and piercingly sweet.

Another common description, and one I have used in the past, is the sensation of being stopped in your tracks, as described by Sue Taylor in an article at Dave’s Garden. She compares the scent to honey.

This year my first thought was of violets. Mary Robson at Muck About describes the fragrance as vanilla and honey. She brings in branches in November and “forces’ them to bloom indoors.

I have tried this myself as a way to extend this delicious scent but it really loses its charm after a few hours in a warm house and becomes cloying. I prefer that elusive, piercing, evasive scent that surprises me on a winter day with its promise of spring.

The Scent of Spring

The first sign of spring for me is always a delightful flowery fragrance that I call the Scent of Spring.

This year I smelled it for the first time on January 8, just outside the front door of an apartment building in my neighborhood.

The next earliest smelling (can't call it a sighting) was January 18 in 2004, so this is really early.

When I got home that night, I saw that the sweet box (Sarcocca humilis, also known as Christmas box) outside my apartment building was already in bloom. So that might be the Scent of Spring. Although my friend Janis mentioned that she smelled a daphne odora the other day, so it could have been a dahpne rather than sweet box.

Whatever it was, I know spring is coming soon. What is the first sign of spring where you live?

This blog entry was cross-posted at my new blog

The Scent of Spring: Sweet Box

I’ve been looking forward to reviving my Blog and musing about what I would feature as the first flower of spring. I always think of Snowdrops as the flower of Candlemas (Feb 2) but I have not yet seen one this year. The plant which has been bringing me the most joy is the lovely sweet box, also known as Sarcococca hookerana, var. humilis, and sometimes as Sarcococca humilis.

This is the plant that always bring me my first whiff of spring. It happened again this year, as it does every year. I’m walking along and suddenly I'm stopped in my tracks by an incredible fragrance, but I can't find the source.

This happened for several days in a row last week, every time I went out the front door of my workplace, Richard HugoHouse, in Seattle. Finally the third time, I stopped and searched for the source of the scent. Even though I knew about sweet box, I didn’t spot it at first. It’s so unassuming. Just a low-lying shrub with glossy green oval leaves, slightly curled around the edges. The flowers are small and white and grow on the undersides of the stems, as if they were hiding. But the scene is divine, both piercing and elusive.

This link has a great picture of it and a good description of how it grows:
http://www.carrollgardens.com/eNewsletter/2005/03/050303-lib.asp

But as usual my favorite gardener Paghat has the best pictures of both Sarcococca humilis, which she says is also called Christmas box and Himalayan box., and a taller version, Sarcococca ruscifolia:
http://www.paghat.com/saracococca.html
http://www.paghat.com/sarcococcahumilis.html

In fact, looking at her pictures, I suspect the plant at work is S. ruscifolia and not humils. She’s also the only person who provided a translation of the genus name: from Sarco (fruit) and Cocca (berry). It does have lovely berries in the fall which turn red, then shiny dark black.

Most writers describe the scent as vanilla. My boss thought it smelled like lavender. I think it’s closer to jasmine. Intense and sweet. It’s more interesting when you drift through it unexpectedly than if you pick a sprig and sniff it. There’s some kind of important lesson for life there.

As recommended by all the gardening sites I visited, the sweet box outside my work is planted near the entrance, against a wall which shelters it from the southern winds and the southern sun. It's also underneath a larger tree which provides shade.

Apparently sarcococca only grows in Zones 6 through 8, so I’m lucky. I can never remember what Zone I live in but apparently I live in the right Zone. It seems like the perfect flower to announce spring, a small, unassuming plant that hints at the pleasures to come.

The wonderful photograph of sweet box above comes from this web site
http://www.biblio.tu-bs.de/geobot/virt-exkursion/virtex_200603.html
which also features photographs of many other early flowering plants. As far as I can tell (my German is not good), these photographs are of plants blooming in March in a botanical garden in Braunschweig.

May you enjoy the first fragrance of spring where you live.