Sachs Museum at Missouri Botanical Garden

#SmellingTheBouquet White sagebrush is found across most of North America and grows to a smaller height than white sage; also aromatic, it has a strong smell and also flowers and produces fruit. It is used by other North American Indigenous tribal nations in many of the same ways as white sage.

#NativeAmericanHeritageMonth #SmellingTheBouquet White sage is a sacred plant for North American Indigenous tribes, used for millennia for religious & cultural purposes. Cultural appropriation of white sage by non-Native people has driven great demand of plant material, including illegal poaching.

#SmellingTheBouquet Native to tropical America, especially Brazil, but invasive in other regions, goat weed is an aromatic herb used in many traditional medicinal applications for wounds, and as an insecticide and nematicide.

#SmellingTheBouquet Native to southeast Asia, Patchouli gained popularity in Europe during the 1840s due to its distinctive aroma, which was associated with exported Indian fabrics such as cashmere shawls, which were packed with its leaves due to its insect repellent qualities.

#SmellingTheBouquet Priprioca has attracted scientific and commercial attention in Brazil due to the pleasing scent of its essential oil, extracted from the rhizomes. Its stems produce small tubers that, when cut, release a fresh, woody, and spicy fragrance.

Banho de cheiro (“scented bath”) is a traditional Amazonian practice that uses aromatic herbs for physical and spiritual cleansing. This knowledge, rooted in traditional Indigenous practices, has been passed down through generations, transformed by various communities and religions over the years.

It's a beautiful day @mobotgarden.bsky.social's Victorian District neighborhood! Victorian-era buildings, including @mobotmuseum, Tower Grove House, Herring House, and Linnaean House are all decked out in miniature and from natural materials in the 2025 Holiday Flower and Train Show!🎄🚃

Thank you Maura!

This is a wonderful post on old specimens and new.

Restoring Palo Santo, the Holy Wood of the Tropical Dry Forest: The research of Elizabeth Collins, George Mason University #SmellingTheBouquet 👃💐
Learn more about Betsy's research: experiment.com/u/4WrVNg

Entrance to Sachs Museum gallery with biography panel on Henry Shaw Garden panel; entrance peeks into gallery with holiday tree in background decorated with ornaments and gold trim.

Panoramic view of main gallery with two story cabinet displays, botanical mural on ceiling, and decorated holiday tree in lower central field of photo

Next time you're @mobotgarden.bsky.social, stop by @mobotmuseum.bsky.social to see the Holiday tree decked out in scent-inspired plants! 🌹👃💐 Grateful thanks to the Garden's Members' Board for featuring fragrance plants on the tree. Best wishes for a fragrant holiday season! Pix: Nathan Kwarta

a close up of a yellow flower with green leaves Alt: Marigolds

9 am to Noon Saturday, Nov 8th, @mobotgarden.bsky.social event

Día de los Muertos

www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/da-de-los-mu...

Garden Admission Free to St. Louis City and St. Louis County residents on Saturday and Wednesday morning, otherwise Admission Fee applies.

This palo santo is one of the most used among Bolivians as incense in Indigenous rituals, such as offerings to Pachamama (goddess of the earth) for whom it was named for science; it is also used for Catholic religious services. In 2023, it was listed as Near Threatened by the IUCN Red List.

This species of palo santo grows in the Yungas, a narrow band of forest on the eastern slope of the Andes north of La Paz, Bolivia. It was named by @mobotgarden.bsky.social botanist Alfredo Fuentes; despite the popularity of this incense plant in Bolivia, it had never been scientifically described.

Palo santo, the holy or sacred wood incense of the Americas ... #SmellingTheBouquet

Palo Santo resin incense pieces
Courtesy of Carmen Ulloa Ulloa

Palo Santo resin incense granules
Courtesy of Alfredo Fuentes

Pix: Virginia Harold

#SmellingTheBouquet Elephant Tree or Torote (Bursera microphylla) is native to the Sonoran Desert, from the SW US to NW Mexico. The Indigenous people of this region—the Comcáac and the Coahuilla—use it medicinally (it's antibactierial!) and burn its resin (copal) as fragrant incense in ceremonies.

Resin plants used for incense grow around the world. 👃💐
These are found in @mobotgarden.bsky.social Shoenberg Arid House #SmellingTheBouquet.

Abyssinian myrrh (Commiphora habessinica) is native to eastern Africa with thorns and anti-bacterial qualities; its resin is used medicinally and is edible.

Not all plant resin smells the same ... 👃💐 In perfume, Peru balsam (Myroxylon peruiferum) is used in amber accords and other gourmand scents (those that smell like food such as chocolate or honey). Its scent include vanilla, smoky, balsamic, and clove notes. You can smell it in #SmellingTheBouquet

#SmellingTheBouquet All of the plant parts can be used to make a medicinal tea to deal with many ailments. It also produces a resin used for varnish, perfume, and incense. The resin exudes from the bark and trickles to the ground where it hardens into lumps and is able to be collected or harvested.

#Incense #SmellingTheBouquet Courbaril, Black copal, Copal negro (Hymenaea courbaril)
Commonly found in the Caribbean, Central & South America, courbaril is an evergreen hardwood tree with many uses. The wood is used for furniture and flooring and the fruit pulp is used for food and drink.

#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 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 👃💐!

Of course! Happy to share and thanks for reading! Cheers!

Nymphs of the Garden: The Water Lilies by Arslan - Discover + Share Nymphs of the Garden: The Water Lilies by Arslan is currently installed in the Stephen and Peter Sachs Museum; though the Garden is open to the public, the Museum is currently closed due to the COVID-...

Thank you so much! There was a water lily exhibition here in 2020 (mostly seen virtually though because the Museum was not fully open thanks to COVID) but these are two blog posts that were written for the show FYI discoverandshare.org/2020/09/02/n... and discoverandshare.org/2020/09/15/c...

#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.

Colin Khoury

Join us next week for our annual John Dwyer Lecture in Biology! 🌿

🗓️ Friday, November 7 from 4–5 p.m.
📍 Bayer Event Center
🔗 buff.ly/RqKtlzt

📸 Crop Trust

#MOBOTGarden