By Ivan Amato
Vince Agnes, as well-appointed as the flowers that he has been selling for more than 60 years in his shop in Silver Spring, Md., remembers when all his roses smelled as good as they looked. When he opened for business in the 1940s, there were only a few varieties: red, white, yellow, and pink, he recalls. “Now, there are thousands,” Agnes says, ” but only a few have a lot of scent.”
No one knows what’s responsible for this waning of fragrance by roses and other ornamental-flower varieties, including carnations and chrysanthemums, but scientists who investigate floral scent suspect that the flower breeding that’s led to an estimated 18,000 rose cultivars in an ever-widening spectrum has run roughshod over fragrance.