As a fellow elitist, I’d like to report some news on the bees and the scent of flowers and why it’s important politicians worldwide should take global warming seriously, not just paying lip service.

Bees, moths, and other insects must rely on scented flowers for food. The flowers they visit also depend on their own fragrances to reproduce, by drawing pollinators in.

A study by Quinn S. McFrederick, James C. Kathilankal, Jose D. Fuentes, published in Atmospheric Environment, shows that air pollution destroys the scent signals of flowers, an effect of bad air that makes pollinators less efficient and plant colonies less robust. Roses and rhododendrons growing in urban parks may look alluring, but traffic fumes and industrial pollutants could be snuffing out their scent.

The discovery might help to explain why bees and other pollinators are in decline around the world. Insects which need nectar for food seek it out by following the scent trails left by flowers. If these are disrupted, foraging for nectar is made more difficult. The plants also suffer because they are less likely to be pollinated or have their pollen carried to other blooms.

Professor Jose Fuentes, from the University of Virginia in the US, one of the study authors, said: “The scent molecules produced by flowers in a less polluted environment, such as in the 1800s, could travel for roughly 1,000 to 1,200 metres. But in today’s polluted environment downwind of major cites, they may travel only 200 to 300 metres.”

To investigate their theory, they created a mathematical model of how the scents of flowers travel with the wind.

Fragrance molecules produced by flowers are very volatile and quickly bond with pollutant molecules such as ozone, hydroxyl, and nitrate radicals which destroy their aromas. Instead of traveling undisturbed for long distances on the wind, the scent molecules are altered so they no longer smell the way they should. This forces pollinators to search further and longer for sources of nectar, and to rely more on sight than smell.

The scientists calculated scent levels and distances that flower aromas can travel under different air conditions. They ranged from environments typical of unpolluted pre-industrial times to those found today in rural areas downwind from large cities.

We need bees! And to attract them, we need to plant flowers beds that are pollution resistant such as the Ribes sanguineum commonly known as the “Red Flowering Currant, a native to the United States, it is also frost hardy. Choose drought tolerant plants like Nepeta Six Hills Giant (Catmint). It looks like huge lavender flowers but uses very little water. You get the idea. Ask your local nursery as to which flower will suit best an urban environment.

Pollination is the transfer of a flowering plant’s male reproductive cells to a female reproductive receptacle. In a word, it is plant sex. Pollination is how plants have solved the problem of reproducing sexually and with diverse mates (which promotes genetic diversity) while they remain rooted in one place. Effective means of pollination are key to the success of angiosperms–the hundreds of thousands of plants, ranging in size from tiny herbs to tall trees, that rely on flowers for effective pollination. Flowers are highly specialized reproductive organs, adapted for the entire gamut of reproductive functions: advertising, pollination, fertilization, seed development, and dispersal of seeds. Beautiful as most flowers are to us, they are strictly functional to the plant. The shapes, colors, and fragrances that we admire do not exist for our enjoyment. These characteristics serve the plant by enticing animals to visit their flowers and using them, literally, as reproductive vehicles.

Allow my elitist nature to post this important message:

All things in this creation exist within you, and all things in you exist in creation; there is no border between you and the closest things, and there is no distance between you and the farthest things, and all things, from the lowest to the loftiest, from the smallest to the greatest, are within you as equal things. In one atom are found all the elements of the earth; in one motion of the mind are found the motions of all the laws of existence; in one drop of water are found the secrets of all the endless oceans; in one aspect of you are found all the aspects of existence.

Kahlil Gibran