Nezka Pfeifer

A Botanical Garden Exhibition That's Inspiring Our Sense of Smell An interview with the curator.

Thanks so much to Frauke Galia from An Aromatic Life for the opportunity to share more about #SmellingTheBouquet 👃💐!

#SmellingTheBouquet Non-timber forest products are valuable resources for culture and community, and generating income. Copal (Protium montanum) from Peru was of interest to Spanish colonizers in South America. It can be used to burn as incense, for medicine, and also for paint and varnish.

#SmellingTheBouquet Mayan copal (Protium copal) is endemic to Mexico and Central America. Considered sacred, copal was burned as offerings to deities in rituals. It continues to be used today for ceremonies and festivals, including Central America’s famous Días de los Muertos (Days of the Dead).

Incense, a biological material that releases fragrant smoke when burned, is one of the most ancient forms of scenting the air or perfuming oneself. Several plants are capable of producing resinous sap, when hardened, becomes able to be burned as incense. See these and more in #SmellingTheBouquet

A marker pole in the ancient North American city of Cahokia probably stood 60 feet tall and weighed 11,000 pounds. One surviving piece has now been dated to A.D. 1124, and the tree probably had to be floated to the city!

archaeology.org/news/2025/10/27/wooden-marker-post-from-cahokia-analyzed/

An estimated 15.7 million workers use SNAP. It’s a lifeline for those in low-wage jobs.

Meanwhile, CEOs are paid 280x as much as the typical worker.

Don’t be angry at workers for using food stamps.

Be angry at the corporations paying them so little that they need them.

#SmellingTheBouquet Native to South America, Victoria amazonica is one of the most recognizable of all water lilies due to the immense size of its lily pads. The night blooming plant has pineapple and butterscotch scented flowers which attract scarab beetles, its primary pollinators in the wild.

#SmellingTheBouquet Perfumer Shawn Maher interpreted the unique scent of Nymphaea ‘BluBop’ a blue-petaled water lily previously on display in the Garden pools and captured its fruity notes of passion fruit, pineapple, and jasmine. You can find the link to buy BluBop perfume in the linktree in bio.

The @mobotgarden.bsky.social water lilies may be gone for 2025, but you can still sniff the flower's fragrance in #SmellingTheBouquet @mobotmuseum.bsky.social! Nymphaea caerulea, the sacred blue water lily of the Nile, is a diurnal water that is fragrant with waxy and green floral notes.

“Fuck AI”

— Guillermo del Toro

🎥 Vanity Fair

Watercolor and gouache painting of three skeletons in black robes tending flowering plants in wooden plank raised garden beds adjacent to an orchard

💀💚🖤💀💚🖤💀💚🖤
The Garden of Death, 1896 by Hugo Simburg
15,8 × 17,5 cm, gouache, paper, watercolour
www.kansallisgalleria.fi/en/object/42...

Pumpkins’ journey from ancient food staple to spicy fall obsession spans thousands of years US farmers grow over 1 billion pounds of pumpkin each year.

The agricultural history of your favorite fall cucurbits: pumpkin 🎃 (ancient) theconversation.com/pumpkins-jou... and butternut squash 🧈🥜 (relatively new) www.edibleboston.com/blog/2023/11...

Thanks to the Internet of Senses Institute and Sofia C. Ehrich, @mobotmuseum.bsky.social's curator Nezka Pfeifer had the opportunity to talk more about how the #SmellingTheBouquet exhibition came to be. Check out the podcast on YT and other podcast platforms youtu.be/C315azl3aRg?...

pen and ink drawing of museum botanical ceiling mural by middle school student featuring plants and tracery

When the thank-you is a hand-drawn portrait of your best feature--@mobotmuseum.bsky.social's botanical ceiling mural)!

Thanks so much to Ms. Martin's and Ms. Lancaster's class from North Kirkwood Middle School for their great visit to #SmellingTheBouquet #PlantsAndScentsInTheGarden this month

YouTube video by UC Davis College of Biological Sciences Pockets Full of Perfume: How Orchid Bees Attract and Choose Mates

Marissa Sandoval and Jasen Liu shared this research in the exhibition; they are a part of the Ramirez Lab at UC Davis that studies the function and evolution of chemical signaling in orchid bees (and other organisms) and plants. More on their work here www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiUe...

Some of the compounds that male orchid bees use have sharp scents, including eugenol (smells like clove!), p-dimethoxybenzene, myrcene, beta-pinene, limonene, and cineole (eucalyptol). You can sniff all of these scents in the #SmellingTheBouquet exhibition @mobotmuseum.bsky.social Pix: V. Harold

Male orchid bees store & blend these chemicals in pouches on their hind legs, and in the presence of a female, they release their bouquet 👃💐. Perfume preference likely played a role in orchid bee speciation throughout the neotropics as each species has its own unique perfume! Pix: M. Sandoval

#SmellingTheBouquet Unlike most other insects, male orchid bees (Euglossa dilemma) do not internally synthesize their own mating compounds (pheromones). Instead they collect them from the environment: oils from orchids (of course!), wood, fungus, and feces. Pix: M. Sandoval

Your Nose Plays a Bigger Role in Taste Than You Ever Realized, Science Confirms According to new research, your nose isn’t just along for the ride when you eat — it’s doing some of the tasting, too. Scientists studying how the brain processes flavor found that smells traveling fr...

"The study also revealed that the brain’s flavor map is flexible, changing over time—a discovery that could help explain how new smells and environments, like walking through a supermarket, influence what foods we crave and choose." www.foodandwine.com/smell-trigge...

Join us for the final event of the #SmellingTheBouquet Sachs Museum Performance Series on Oct. 11!

Explore scents and poetry with poet Devin Johnston in two performances at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. Free with Garden admission. Sponsored by Nancy Ridenour.

www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/sachs-museum...

@placesjournal.bsky.social thanks for reposting!

Architects in Wonderland Decades ago, James Marston Fitch argued that reuse of existing buildings should be prioritized over new construction. His thesis is more relevant than ever.

‘In architecture,’ Fitch wrote, ‘there are no spectators: there are only participants.’ @placesjournal.bsky.social #FutureArchive placesjournal.org/article/arch...

OK, we've found our favorite Garden spot this summer over at 📍 mobotmuseum.bsky.social! 😌

We're curious: what's been your favorite Garden spot so far?

📸 Nathan Kwarta

#MOBOTGarden

This Saturday!👃💐

Dr. Carlsen is working on a project that will provide the first comprehensive characterization of floral scent diversity and variation across the genus Anthurium. The discovery of new chemical compounds in Anthurium scents could potentially lead to innovation in the perfume industry.

The live collections @mobotgarden.bsky.social offer myriad opportunities to learn more about plants. Dr. Mónica Carlsen shared her botanical scent research in #SmellingTheBouquet @mobotmuseum.bsky.social. She conducted headspace/scent trapping to gather data about the variety of tropical plants.

Sardines Brooch. Designer: Hattie Carnegie (American, 1886–1956). Date: c. 1960s. Medium: metal “tin” with molded thermoplastic fish; brooch format (also produced as a pendant). By the Hattie Carnegie costume‑jewelry house, which continued to operate after Carnegie’s death.
#globalmuseum #Jewellery

'Last generation': Greek island's fading pistachio tradition Four farmhands whacked a pistachio tree with sticks, and ripe nuts rained down onto tarps. The bounty seemed plentiful but the crew was unimpressed.

The Greek island of Aegina that hosts an annual pistachio festival is losing its yield due to climate change www.france24.com/en/live-news...

Hear What the Language Spoken by Our Ancestors 6,000 Years Ago Might Have Sounded Like: A Reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European Language As scholars of ancient texts well know, the reconstruction of lost sources can be a matter of some controversy.

Hear What the Language Spoken by Our Ancestors 6,000 Years Ago Might Have Sounded Like: A Reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European Language

Trifold brochure featuring fragrant plants on left and right panels, with center panel reproducing the Museum's botanical ceiling mural

Sept 14 is World #TasteAndSmellDay, an annual celebration of the profound impact that taste and smell have on our daily lives. Celebrate by exploring @mobotmuseum.bsky.social's UNCOVERING THE FRAGRANT plants guide to the Museum's mural either in person or virtually-download at the linktree in bio!