Re: How do flowers aquire their unique scent?

Hi Mariah,

I have good news and bad news. The good news is that I can answer your 
question in a general sense (no pun intended!), but the bad news is that I 
can't answer it specifically. 

Generally speaking, flowers acquire their unique scents by biochemically 
synthesizing and emitting a unique combination of various chemicals, among 
which can be n-alkanes, n-alkenes, aldehydes, esters, aromatic alcohols, 
sulfur compounds, and terpenoids. I know from my limited personal 
background in synthesizing esters of carboxylic acids that those compounds 
often had a very fruity/grape smell, and flowers naturally do the same 
thing, except that they are synthesizing and releasing into the atmosphere 
large combinations of various compounds. These compounds float around in 
the air, and when you inhale that air they stick to proteins called 
receptors that are in and around the skin cells in your nose. When one of 
these compounds binds to its receptor, that receptor activates a nerve. 
The different compounds stick to different receptors, thus activating 
different nerves, and the sum total of whatever nerves get activated by 
the combination of different compounds registers in your brain as the 
overall smell of the flower. Incidentally, this is what perfume companies 
do to generate perfume: they mix various combinations of these types of 
chemicals until they arrive at a scent they like. I am not a botanist, but 
I am guessing that at least one of the purposes of flowers having scents 
is to attract insects that will accidentally carry the flower's pollen to 
other plants and thus fertilize them.

That is generally how flowers acquire their unique scents. I do not know 
what particular combination of chemicals leads to the scent of a rose, 
unfortunately. 

I hope that helps.

Chris