I love the new way of posting pictures! Here's one of the whole clump of butterfly ginger. If you look closely you can see the large decorative votive candle holder that I staked in front of the plants in order to keep them upright. They would really prefer to be laying in the pond though!

Kara

I love butterfly ginger! But unfortunately i don't have a good place for it. For me, it's my rosemary bush by the front door, especially when it rains.

Love butterfly ginger and yours looks so happy and healthy!
Tea olives I also love even though the plant is scruffy looking - they are in a bloom cycle now.
Sweet almond, lakeview jasmine and passion vines are among my other favs
Hester

Roses, roses, roses....

Three in bloom now are wafting around the garden. Stops me in my tracks every time.

Night blooming jasmine. I'll even cut off a twig and bring it inside at night. It will fill the whole house. I love it, but it can give me weird dreams if I sleep with the smell for some reason!

Hi
There certainly are a lot to choose from!! Tough to beat any of the citrus family lemon being the strongest
Many orchids ranging from cinnamon, lemon, coconut, and what I like to call orchid as it's unique Gardenia but don't plant near an air conditionerlol Ylang ylang , Amazon lily and besides butterfly many gingers.
My favorite is a waterlily called Blue goddess So powerful you can smell it in the house , cross between floral,spice but unique.
Noticeable are Corpse lilies as the aroma is definitely NOT heavenly lol Somewhere between rotted flesh and fresh dung.lol Another is purple passion vine Should get an award as the worlds "ugliest flower" looks much more like a disease and smells somewhere between rancid fat or spoiked milk lol certainly memeorable aromas!! gary

Good topic! I love your white butterfly ginger - so pretty, healthy, and I agree, the fragrance is divine. I don't have any at the moment, but it's something I need to add, lol

My unruly plant that I love to watch bloom, and smell, is the white orchid cactus. Purely ugly all year, until that very special night when it puts on its show. Oh, how I love that event!

Randy

Gardenia- Magnolia-- Don Juan rose--Chrysler Imperial rose---- whooooey...sally

Your Butterfly Ginger is so pretty. I have 2 Angel's Trumpets blooming now, "Equador Pink and Sunset'" the smell is close to freshly cleaned laundry. My Night Blooming Jasmine hasn't really produced that really sweet smell that everyone else seems to get:-(

Is butterfly ginger a tropical? We can get down to 9 degrees here some winters. Oh, how I love fragrant flowers! I just finished researching them on Floridata. I learned sooo much. Gardenia is #1 for me. I've only smelled Ylang ylang oil and loved it! Night blooming jasmine, and yes I have brought it in the house. Jatropha has a spicy, weird smell. I'd love to smell the water lily, tea olive and several that I discovered on Floridata. I'm a Master Gardener in Baker county, Florida. We have a new arboretum there and I was doing research for fragrant flowers and foliage because we can get a grant for them. I couldn't find much about fragrant foliage other than herbs. Any ideas?

Zackey
There's a shell ginger that has fragrant foliage - smells so fresh and spicey when you brush against it. Mine in Chokoloskee Zone 10 got huge in the oyster shell soil. Not sure how it does in colder zones.

Susie

One of mine is Desmos chinensis which is also called Dwarf Ylang Ylang vine. It was given to me by a wonderful GW member years ago. It's been blooming for months and the entire east side of my house smells like a pleasant bottle of perfume most of the day. I love it.

Yep my Magnolia's and my Hong Cong Orchids in winter

My new favorite is Four-O'clocks! I wish I could find a perfume that smelled like that! Also Sweet Olive, Magnolia, and any citrus flowers. I also love the fragrance of the leaves of Dahlenberg Daisies. It is a very green, fresh smell. Roses and Lavendar are a close second. On the other hand, I loathe the smell of Lantana leaves. Jasmine and Gardenia are OK at a distance, but too cloying close up.

Good post! I love fragrant plants and hedychiums are one of my favorites. My h kewense is stealing the show right now. Some I enjoy in my yard but do not see listed are radermanchera kunming, var solandra grandiflora, randia, dombeya wallachi, bombax glabrum, murraya, euphorbia leucocephala, clerodendrum minihassee, cananga fruticosa, artabotrys, rangoon creeper, and brunfelsia nitida. Suprisingly I dont think anyone mentioned citrus which are quite heavenly.

Zackey, I have a bush the man at the nursery called a Florida Anise. It's not the anise we use when baking, etc. It has shiny evergreen leaves and in spring, tiny yellow flowers. One must break the leaf to release the sweet, anise scent. I'm drying some trimmings at the moment with the idea of using that concentrated scent in a batch of potpourri, Will let you know how it turns out.

After it finishes blooming, I plan to take some cuttings. I'm starting a number of plants, mostly trees, for our Baker County property -- if we can ever manage to get a house built! I'd plant some crepe myrtles now, but fear the deer will destroy them the first day out. cora

Everyone on the forum is going to laugh, but the plant I put up with year round for its heavenly scent is a corn plant. Yep, that houseplant that people in Florida plant outdoors, just to see what it will do, and it becomes and an unruly and unattractive tree.
But once a year it has these really inconspicuous brown blossoms that make the entire neighborhood smell lovely at night for a few nights. It took awhile for me and my neighbors to figure out that it was my corn plant making that smell. I had planned to take it down but hadn't because it's tangled in the 220 line from the street to our house _ a good reason to get rid of it, but also a reason to put that off until I can figure out how not to electrocute myself doing it.
And now, discovering its scent, I leave it. How bad is this tree? Every couple years, during a windy thunderstorm, it knocks out the 220 line, leaving us without a/c, stove or hot water. But the scent is worth it.

Gee Susie, you're right...I was trying to think of something to add to this post ;-)

Tom

I was introduced to the smell of white butterfly ginger at a neighbor's last year. Today I just got home from her house, armed with about 20 plants and some 2-3 feet long pieces of rhizome.

I'm so excited! :D Hers haven't started blooming yet, so hopefully there won't be much loss of this-year blooms with the younger plants I got.

-- now I just need to figure out a good place for them to live!

My first ginger lily bloom opened late afternoon yesterday. It smells fabulous and you can smell it as soon as you walk onto the back porch. Even my husband and kids are impressed.

I'm not sure the other plants will produce this year as they're still pretty small and the 2nd largest was broken yesterday :(. The one that's blooming has required quite a bit of TLC as I didn't (apparently) get quite enough roots when I dug it, it gets droopy if I don't water it 2-3 a day if we don't get rain.

I moved one of the small plants down to where out gray water flows - probably 35 yards from the house but an area where it might do really well and I could have a ginger lily forest (and have to worry less about mowing during the summer).

I have the tall yellow butterfly ginger and Dr Moy that smells wonderful too. They both out grow their space I need to watch them like I do the white butterfly ginger but I love the scent of all 3 so I keep them. I have several other ginges, but they don't seem to smell as much and I may get rid of them. :o)

I have a joy perfume tree and a rangoon creeper that are new...haven't had the chance to smell yet...Can't wait!

I have the "Joy Perfume Tree", Magnolia champaca 'Alba'. The fragrance carries really well, you can smell it all around the place. It can only be propagated by marcotting as it doesn't produce seed. As mine gets bigger I intend to try propagating it to get more trees going.

I have the Joy Perfume tree too and I am disappointed in mine. It doesn't have much fragrance to me. I also have a Ylang Ylang tree, but I'd say the sweet almond put's them all to shame. :o)

Katkin, that's strange, the first I've heard of it not having "much fragrance". What colour are the flowers on yours?

Katkin, that's strange, the first I've heard of it not having "much fragrance". What colour are the flowers on yours?

The flowers are tiny yellow ones on the perfume tree.

The yellow/orange flowered one isn't the true Joy Perfume tree. That's the one that seeds and so is propagated more commonly. The true one has white flowers and can only be propagated by marcotting as it doesn't produce seeds. That's why it's more difficult to find and also far more expensive. The true one is called Magnolia (Michelia) champaca 'Alba'. The other is just Magnolia (Michelia) champaca. Try googling it, there's quite a bit of information about it.

LOL, my mistake. I was thinking you were talking about Chinese perfume tree, aglara odorata. I have the alba too and it is a much bigger tree, maybe 20 feet. I also have the ylang ylang tree. While I can smell them, I don't notice them that much. Maybe it's over load, but the night blooming jasmine and the sweet almond are the ones I notice. I did smoke for years, maybe my sence of smell isn't what it should be any more. BTW, I don't any more. :o)

The Southern Magnolia huge white, hypnotically aromatic, is my favorite. blooms here foralmost 4 months. Have seen more than one passerby walk up from the sidewalk for a sniff.
My contribution !

A better view,...
I have the two trees ( 6 & 18 ft tall), situated close to front of my 10' x 20 ' lanai. From early March thru June is my favorite time out there. The weather is coolish, - with 76 - 83 deg highs, little humidity and with a 7 - 9 mph breeze that ebbes and flows, - gently providing the faint scent of the large white flowers,..magic ! Why I moved to Florida, hard to experience this in an apt building in Manhattan ! lol

This post was edited by jofus on Sat, Oct 26, 13 at 12:20

Nycanthes Arbor -tristis (aka Indian Night Jasmine) A night bloomer whose flowers drop when the sun hits them in the morning. Sometimes if its really cloudy they will stay on for a while. Has a very honeyed jasmine scent. Ours is about 8-9 feet tall now. It is completely covered in blooms right now.

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This post was edited by sultry_jasmine_night on Sat, Oct 26, 13 at 12:33