That love of nature is an innate human quality, is the subject of E.O. Wilson’s 1984 book, Biophilia. According to Wilson, ants (and their close relatives, bees, wasps, and termites) and humans are the only truly altruistic animals on earth. A colony of these ants is made up entirely of sisters. Because the sisters all share the same genes and do not reproduce, it is adaptive for them to work together for the health of the colony, to the death, forming the perfect society imagined in Plato’s Republic.
Ants experience the world by senses of taste and smell that are thousands of times stronger than that of humans. Humans mainly experience the world by the senses of sight and hearing, from vantage points thousands of times higher than ants. Humans have relatively poor senses of smell and taste, though these senses form the strongest memories we have. Perhaps minimal senses of smell and taste were evolutionary trade-offs; as humans evolved to eat a greater variety of foods, smell and taste were reduced to improve the palatability of otherwise offensive foods. This is similar to the case of owls, which have evolved to eat skunks; owls don’t have a sense of smell. Or perhaps as humans developed an identification system using formal names, our antecdent method of identification using senses of smell and taste fell into the background. But evidenced by our heightened memories of smells and tastes, these senses are still important.
Primitive humans used to determine the edibility of plants through an ordered series of tests: the smell test, the lick test, the bite test, the eating of a morsel test, where more and more was eaten, until the safety of the plant was determined. Then there are also children who bypass this series of tests and determine right away whether a certain plant is edible or poisonous. As a youngster, I found that the enchanting red berries of the sweet mucilaginous yew (Taxus baccata) (the poisonous seeds of which I would spit out) and the flavorless wild false strawberries (Potentilla indica), were fun to eat. Plants with pungent acrid odors are often poisonous and are naturally avoided. Some deceiving plants, like the arrow arum (Peltandra), have been dubbed “memory plants” by those unfortunate enough to chomp them. My uncle (and mentor in nature-study) once fed his family poisonous mushrooms; thankfully the family is still alive. Few plants are potent enough to kill a human upon the swallowing of a small morsel; the Destroying Angel Mushroom (Amanita) is one. Curiously, people have acquired the knowledge to use many poisonous plants and mushrooms medicinally.
I am a connoisseur of plant smells. As I walk through the forest, I pick up samples, crush them, smell them, and store them in my pockets for perfume, car decorations, future use, identification, or good luck. I can rarely be found without a plant on me. Even those plants that I have smelled many times, I like to smell again to see how they change with the seasons or how one individual’s odor varies from another. Most importantly in our modern age, plant smells are just beautiful; they are a complement to our audio-visually dominated lifestyle. Me and my nose are cross-pollinaters of flowers. As the bees die off, we will all have to stop to smell, if only to help the flowers.
The other day as I was walking through Central Park by the reservoir, I smelled a lilac bush (Syringa) from 30 meters away! As I approached it I observed two young woman admiring the smell as well and it occurred to me that having botanical knowledge is a good way to meet girls, but I will save that for a future blog.
