MUSCARI AS SCENT SUBJECTS
 

Muscari are the perfect scent subjects. Everything about them makes you want to investigate them more closely. The repeated florets each contain tiny stamens of pollen, which seem too impossibly tiny to be functional. The blues feel otherworldly, cool, as wide as skies, and as deep as oceans. We spent some time cataloguing their scent notes in the polytunnel with the lingering heat of a sunny day rapidly disappearing as the sun lowered. The scent of muscari is unexpected. There is a sweetness, but not always the floral sweetness we expect from flowers. Their scent leans in all directions, floral, fruity, earthy, myrrh, woody, and then settles, sometimes into language and sometimes not quite. It is difficult to separate scent from appearance. The blue suggests coolness, and so the nose looks for it, but the scent is warmer than expected, more rounded. This slight dissonance makes it harder to fix in the mind. There is variation between them, each particular variety holds a slightly different note. They are not showy like a rose, identifying their fragrances takes patience. They say, stay with me.