One of the most important things we look for when buying flowers is how they smell. While some flowers are scentless those which we cultivate and give as gifts tend to have pleasant odors and this is part of their appeal. The smell is of course an effective way of attracting pollinators like Bees and other insects but it also attracts humans. Flowers which we find pleasant have surely benefited from being cultivated by humans over the years, becoming more prevalent than they might otherwise have been.

The problem is that people like to buy flowers when have yet to open but it is difficult to tell what they will smell like. The boffins at a well known British supermarket have come up with an ingenious solution to this problem: scratch and sniff packaging. The Telegraph explains the process that went into creating the scratch and sniff panels:

Floral fragrance expert Dr Hazel MacTavish-West and natural perfumer Dr John Heffernan were enlisted to assess the fragrance of open lily flowers. Each component of the fragrance was analysed and then recreated as a fragrance in a bottle… The final step was to encapsulate the fragrance into a print varnish, which is applied to a print label as the final step. The varnish is unscented until you brush your finger across the page, breaking open the capsules and allowing the fragrance to escape.

So now you can tell what your flowers will smell like once they have opened, assuming that the synthetic compound is accurate. I wonder if they will accept returns if the flowers don’t match the scratch and sniff?

Related links:

How does scratch and sniff work?
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Why do flowers smell good?

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