the.com/gardenia
A flower so fragrant it perfumes rooms, then bruises brown if you dare to touch it.
means A glossy-leaved shrub of the coffee family bearing intensely fragrant white or yellow flowers, prized in gardens and corsages alike.
from Named in honor of Alexander Garden, an 18th-century Scottish-born naturalist and physician working in colonial South Carolina, who corresponded with the great Swedish taxonomist Linnaeus. The plant got his surname dressed up in Latin botanical robes — Gardenia — so the flower forever carries a man's name and, by sheer luck, a perfect description of where it belongs.
- touch sensitive
- Petals brown wherever fingers brush them
- named after
- Scottish naturalist Alexander Garden, who never saw one
- coffee cousin
- Belongs to the same family as coffee
- night bloomer
- Releases strongest scent after dark to lure moths
- acid lover
- Demands acidic soil or leaves turn sickly yellow
gardenia jasminoides — native to china and japan, the most commercially cultivated species with fragrant white flowers
gardenia carinata — endemic to madagascar, a critically endangered species with only a few wild plants remaining
gardenia taitensis — the national flower of tahiti, used in traditional lei making throughout french polynesia