The last shrub wildflowers of the summer
Get to know this shrub and its fragrant flowers, and also the molecules that confer its soft sweet perfumes.
Here they are, the colors and perfumes of the last big flowers I will see in these forests until next summer. The plant is quite abundant, but this one was in a particularly open area where I could take nice photographs:
The plant, actually a well-grown shrub, is a member of the Buddleja family, probably Buddleja davidii. According to Wikipedia it is originally from China and Japan but has been naturalized in many areas of the world -in some actually being an invasive species.
What I like about this plant is that it brushstrokes the forest with pink when it is still very green, by the end of the summer and before the fall. See a closer view of this specimen:
And now see the detail of the inflorescence:
Check here this closeup on the little flowers:
The flowers are quite fragrant, not strong enough for a single plant to flood the forest but enough to enjoy a fresh, sweet, honey-like aroma around it. Personally, I love it.
Very interestingly, according to this article the exact fragrance that each plant of the Buddleja genus develops seems to change depending on the pollinators they want to attract. For example, some varieties emit mainly 4-Oxoisophorone and linalool while others emit mainly beta-caryophyllene and 1-octen-3-ol. These molecules, all fragrant with different kinds of sweet flavors, look like this in 3D as seen on my moleculARweb website for chemistry:
And in greeting you, reader, if you are curious about these augmented reality views of molecules, then check out my story on commodity web augmented reality for chemistry and biology:
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