Willow Glen Resident

Gardening

Sweet alyssum is a fragrant, trailing or spreading annual with a long blooming period. It self-sows easily and grows quickly. Sweet alyssum appreciates full sun and regular irrigation.

It's springtime, and time to stop and smell the flowers

By Tony Tomeo

Every spring at about this time, something mysterious blooms in my neighborhood. The powerfully sweet fragrance is impossible to ignore, but the flowers cannot be seen, at least until I go looking for them.

When the fragrance first arrives, I look around nearby in my garden for the source, even though I know it is coming from fragrant sarcococca across the street. This unassuming little shrub has glossy dark green leaves that are more remarkable than the tiny white flowers they obscure. Although they do this every year, I still find it hard to believe such a strong fragrance cannot only be coming from such an unremarkable flower, but that it can permeate the neighborhood.

Ironically, several unassuming flowers do the same thing. This is certainly not for our enjoyment, but is an alternative means to attract pollinators without using showy flowers. They have come to realize that if they cannot attract a pollinator with their good looks, then they will use more perfume to get noticed. It just happens to smell good to everyone else as well.

Honeysuckle, Natal plum and particularly sweet olive (Osmanthus fragrans) and night blooming jasmine are other very fragrant flowers that also hide in their own foliage. Gardenia, daphne, citrus and Southern magnolia at least try to bloom more impressively, but lack abundance. Star jasmine, mock orange (Philadelphus), apple, pear and the various stone-fruit (apricot, cherry, peach, plum, etc.) put on a better show of profusion, so do not need to be quite as fragrant.

Other flowers seem to be quite vain by advertising by both means, but they are really trying to ensure that if they are not seen, they will be smelled, and visa versa. Wisteria, pink jasmine, lilac, narcissus, hyacinth, bearded iris and freesia are among the most popular of these. The feral freesias that grow from the seed of hybrid freesia put less effort into color and more into fragrance. Bright yellow daffodils have put so much into being the best-dressed narcissus that they forgot to wear perfume.

Flowers are not the only source of fragrance in the garden. There happens to be some rosemary in my garden that does something different and much more passive to create fragrance. In fact, it is doing it right now. It is simply being aromatic, and will be even more so later in summer when weather gets warmer. (Flowers are described as fragrant. Foliage is described as aromatic.) Aromatic foliage is rarely as strong as floral fragrance, and can be imperceptible during cool and very dry weather (minimal humidity).

Some of the most popular aromatic plants are lavender, breath of heaven, various salvias, pelargoniums (geraniums), chrysanthemum, marigold, mint, thyme and, of course, rosemary. Trees such as incense cedar, camphor, cypress, eucalyptus, bay and pine are also aromatic, but their foliage is often out of reach. Incense cedar is so aromatic that some people like to grow it with low branches so that foliage can be cut and brought into the home with or even without flowers.

Flower of the Week:
Sweet Alyssum

I planted sweet alyssum, Lobularia maritima, for the first and last time when I was in the third grade in 1976. The seed was included in a small envelope of mixed flower seed that came in a gardening magazine my mother read. All the flowers of the mix grew and bloomed the first year. Some of them seeded and bloomed to a lesser degree the second year. By the fourth year, they had finished, except for the sweet alyssum, which still blooms when the weather has been warm for a while.

Sweet alyssum is prolific without being invasive. It is easy to pull if it comes up where it is not wanted. Fortunately, it seems to prefer to be in obscure spots nothing else is growing in. All it needs is sunlight to grow and bloom from seed within less than two months.

Most sweet alyssum is less than four inches deep and blooms with small clusters of tiny white flowers that are quite fragrant. Some produce pink or light purple flowers. After a few generations, all eventually revert to more natural characteristics, with smaller white flowers and floppier growth. The delicately narrow leaves are usually less than an inch long.