I once wrote an article on appreciating rhododendrons for foliage, wherein I celebrated that wonderful, but under-rated, subsection of rhododendrons, the Taliensia (I love the sound of that name). I described R. traillianum as smelling of camphor and peach soap.

What the hell was I smoking? I wasn't and no, in retropspect, I think I was actually pretty accurate. Just so you know I'm not kidding around (this being April 1st and all), I also ascribed camphor, honey and mint to the aroma of R. balfourianum and camphor, cloves and soap to R. wasonii.

The article was presumably read by a few people (it was even reprinted in another publication), but I got nary a peep out of anyone. Either they believed me or didn't feel like disagreeing in public. Maybe they just gave up reading after the first paragraph. Another possibility is that people think I'm nuts, that these smells are all in my head. I have run into a few true onosmics (people with no sense of smell), but surely, most people can differentiate Abies grandis from A. amabilis (respectively: lemon + pine Mr. Clean vs. tangerines). No? To be honest, I've met non onosmics who couldn't smell their way out of a detergent aisle in a supermarket.

Maybe people are just too shy to describe smells. I don't know. Okay. This is a plea to those people--and I know you're out there--who go around sniffing at plants like I do (let me assure you, I limit this behaviour to plants). Anybody ever smelled the unfolding leaves of Nothofagus antarctica?

Hey Daniel, lovely rhodie but the Danish links are forbidden!

Is it possible that a bandwidth limitation was briefly met? Only other things I can think of would be a local firewall configuration problem or an IP banning configuration on the Danish web server.