There’s Something in the Air, and for a Change, It’s Sweet

It has been striking mostly in the dark, like so many things these days, creeping surreptitiously through neighborhood streets, sneaking into bedrooms through open windows, even overpowering unsuspecting late-night commuters as they pull into their driveways.

And Los Angeles, for once, is breathing a deep sigh of relief.

“Blossoms are blooming, the sap is rising and people are going crazy,” said Shirley Kerins, a curator at the Huntington Gardens in San Marino. “It has even infected non-plant people. Everyone has gone spacey.”

Thanks to an unusually mild winter and a record-breaking heat wave, spring has sprung like rarely before in Los Angeles, packing the air with intoxicating scents of citrus, jasmine, daffodils and even oak. The injection of honey-sweet air has come weeks ahead of schedule and has turned life topsy-turvy in a fed-up city on the verge of reneging on its legendary love affair with Mother Nature.

“You just have to take a deep breath and you can’t miss it,” Patricia Torres, an attorney from Echo Park, said as she waited for a ride home this week at a busy Downtown intersection. “Living in a big city where there is so much traffic and stress, it is so nice to smell something sweet in the air.”

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The infusion of natural goodness into air best known for its toxicity has invited an entire region of locked doors and closed windows into the streets. Couch potatoes are stealing away from their sitcoms for an evening stroll, neighbors are smiling across back-yard fences and even motorists are cracking their windows ever so slightly.

“It just makes you happy to be alive,” said Lynette Goins of Hollywood, reading a romance novel on a balmy afternoon. “First thing in the morning when I step off the bus the trees smell wonderful.”

LuAnn Munns, who lives on a hillside in Glendora and commutes to work in South Gate, smells it best on the San Gabriel River Freeway in the very early morning. It is hard to tell what exactly is in the air--she says it has an indescribable nippy scent--but it is heavenly and enough to carry her through the day. When she gets home at night, she fixes upon the blossoms of her back-yard lime tree, planted years ago to supply her beloved margaritas.

“This is the payoff time of the year,” said Munns, a fierce gardener whose house is built around an atrium stuffed with plants. “I just blunder along and can’t name what I am smelling, but just know it is wonderful.”

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There is plenty of blissful bewilderment in the air. Spring fragrances, it seems, are a very personal thing, with just about everyone snorting a slightly different scent. One nose’s orange blossom may be another’s pittosporum undulatum (also known as mock orange) . Is that the aura of night-blooming jasmine, or a flush of angel trumpets? Osmanthus fragrans (sweet olive) or a tall bearded iris?

Clair Martin, a horticulturist who tends the roses at the Huntington, was a bit stymied when asked to isolate the fragrances in his own San Marino neighborhood. Martin grew up in Orange County and knows orange blossoms, and this smell is not the same, he said. The scent is strongest between 9 and 10 p.m. when Martin walks his dog, and punctually disappears by daybreak.

Martin suspects sweet olive trees or perhaps a low-growing shrub with small white blossoms that is standard landscape fare in the affluent San Gabriel Valley suburb. Martin didn’t dwell on the plant’s proper name, choosing instead to rave about its evening aroma.

“It smells sweet, almost honey-like,” he said, noting the only downside is that it exudes the stench of old socks during the daytime. “Most of us just say that it smells good and leave it at that.”

The nocturnal mystery is less daunting to explain. Some blooming plants have such subtle scents that they are disturbed by the sun, Martin said. Plant fragrances are carried in alcohol or oil-based chemicals that evaporate quickly in the hot, dry daylight. Cooler evenings, with greater humidity, help plants disperse their olfactory glory to those in the animal kingdom--most notably pollinating insects, but also many grateful humans.

Jim Bauml, botanist for the Los Angeles County Arboretum, said the region’s aromatic atmosphere should persist for four or five weeks before succumbing to the sting of smog and nature’s inevitable segue into summer. Bauml advises enthusiastic sniffers to do a little research on their neighborhood greenery and make an adventure of this most pleasant time of year.

“Sometimes you have to get up close and stick your nose right into the blossoms,” Bauml advised. “Just make sure there aren’t any bees in there.”