The Yellow Rose of Texas…Not.

Remember the Amorphophallus Titanum? You would if you’d ever gotten a whiff of one. The plant, whose name literally translates to “Giant Misshapen Penis,” is as infamous as its close cousin, the stinking corpse lily (Rafflesia Arnoldii), for its distinctive floral bouquet reminiscent of decomposing flesh.

A rare specimen of the exotic plant is currently raising quite a stink at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Because the titanum blooms briefly only once every few years, the museum decided yesterday to stay open 24 hours a day until Lois (that’s the flower, named after a former employee’s mother) bursts into odiferous bloom, an occurrence which will last only about 8-10 hours and has kept throngs of museum visitors waiting anxiously for days.

“I’m really excited and anxious to see it and smell it, but it’s nature and we can’t rush that,” says staff horticulturalist Zac Stayton, who brought his sleeping bag with him to work and said he does not plan on going home until the the 5-foot-tall bud opens, which is expected no later than tomorrow (Wednesday) afternoon. “This is the price you have to pay for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

A Perfumer’s Dream Exhibit: Whale Vomit?

An exhibition at the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo is featuring a rare chunk of one of the most coveted (and priciest, with a market value of about $20 per gram) ingredients known to perfumers - ambergris. Also called “grey amber” or “floating gold,” ambergris is actually bile secreted by sperm whales. Fresh ambergris smells absolutely horrible, but, after a few years’ exposure to the elements, the substance develops a sweet, musky and alluring smell that leading fragrance makers say adds a distinct and highly appealing character. While synthetic versions have been developed for the fragrance industry, genuine ambergris has become the stuff of legend.

Upon discovering that a small amount of natural ambergris had been carefully stored at the Tokyo museum for years, Kanebo Cosmetics struck a bargain to excise and process a tiny sample. Dissolved in alcohol and matured over a period of several months, the final distinctively sweet smelling product is now part of the “Great Mammals Exhibition: Inhabitants of the Seas” which opened on July 10 and will be available to curious whiffers through September 26.

Steve Martin’s Snooty Contract Demands

Lear jets and bendy straws are for wimps. According to Steve Martin’s massive rider for his tour with the Steep Canyon Rangers (hilariously “leaked” at the comedian’s own website), this guy takes prima donna-ism to a whole new level with three pages of demands including that “at least six (6) but no more than sixty-five thousand (65,000) holistic aromatherapy candles shall be placed in dressing rooms and lit no later than 1 hour prior to Artists’ arrival, enough to resemble Susan Sarandon’s bathroom in ‘Bull Durham.’ Approved scents include Sandalwood, Clover and Flop Sweat.”

A Fresh New Signature Scent for the Bronx

Summertime in the South Bronx could be a lot sweeter this year if Majora Carter has anything to say about it. The green guru and MacArthur Genius Award winner wants to pump the essence of “grain, rain and citrus” into a Hunts Point apartment building to replace the structure’s current signature scent of sewage and exhaust.

The celebrated founder of Sustainable South Bronx partnered with Parisian perfumers Pascal Gaurin and Bruno Jovanovic to create L’Eau Verte du Bronx du Sud - or Green Water of the South Bronx - which Carter hopes will infuse the occupants of the Sister Thomas Apartments with a sense of optimism and happiness. “The part of your brain that senses scent can allow you to feel really bad about what you see in front of you—or really good—depending on what it is,” explains Carter. The nonprofit South East Bronx Community Organization (SEBCO) hopes to release the perfume into a rooftop air unit at the building where it will waft into the hallways and common areas - but not into the 103 apartment units - as soon as the complex’s 200 residents give them the nod.

Most residents of the low-income building in Longwood, which is well within range of both a noxious sewage treatment plant and a trash transfer station, are more than willing to give the idea a shot. “Anything to make the Bronx smell better,” says Yolanda Rivera, who can smell sewage from her seventh-floor apartment.

Building manager Sal Gigante concurs believes tenants will definitely prefer the “nice outdoorsy aroma” of L’Eau Verte du Bronx du Sud to the more traditional borough bouquet of “decaying rat carcass.”

Wanted: Noses - No Experience Necessary

“You know that metaphor when people say something ‘doesn’t pass the smell test’?” MSNBC host Rachel Maddow asked her viewers last Friday evening. “Well now, in the BP oil disaster era, it’s no longer a metaphor. Smell tests - for real. Trained smell-testers monitoring America’s seafood supply.”

In a admittedly bizarre effort to detect oil-tainted seafood before it hits the open market, about sixty “sniffers” have been trained so far in “seafood sensory testing” by the International Food Protection Training Institute and NOAA Fishery Service at the National Seafood Inspection Lab in Pascagoula, Mississippi.

Gerald Wojtala, director of the IFPTI, acknowledged that the method may sound silly, but said it’s nonetheless a time-proven technique. “The human nose has been used on a lot of spill response. There are a lot of sophisticated tests, but when you think about it, do you want to run a test that takes seven days and costs thousands of dollars?”

Although Wojtala verified that his agency is not seeking out people with supernatural smelling abilities to put on the case, but is rather training regular folks to be able to detect contamination, he does acknowledge that they occasionally run across what Maddow called “star noses,” people with a much more natural affinity for the work. The first level of training produces only “screeners,” but some move on through the ranks to become “assessors or even experts,” says Wojtala. “It all depends on how good their God-given talents are.”

It may not be the failsafe 21st century technology Americans might expect to see at work, but as a first response, says Wojtala, “it puts more eyes and noses at different points in the system.”

Joe Jenkins, owner of the Crystal Seas Seafood Company, agrees. “Here, we don’t have inspectors on any level so we have to inspect our ownseafood products to make sure they’re safe and oil-free and good to eat.”

Others, like Mississippian Mike Triana, have their doubts. “No way. How they gonna know? I ain’t eating any of it. I don’t trust the nose.”

(Maddow’s full interview with Gerald Wojtala can be found HERE.)

The Fresh New Holiday Inn Launches in Portsmouth

It’s been about six months since the Whiff-Guys told you about the Fresh New Holiday Inn, $1-billion global re-launch aiming to makeover some 3,200 properties of the iconic chain by the end of 2010 with a spiffy new logo, higher-end room amenities, and the hotel’s very own White Tea and Citrus Signature Fragrance.

This month, after four years of renovation, the U.K.’s Holiday Inn Portsmouth has completed its transformation, and General Manager Kevin Israel couldn’t be happier. “The visible changes at the hotel include new signage, entrance music and even a signature scent in the lobby.”

But the real emphasis in this latest incarnation of the hotel chain that began its franchise in America in the 1950s, says Israel, is that of customer service. The staff, consisting of over 100 local people, have all completed a training program called “Stay Real” which focuses on a positive approach and efficient response to all guest requests.

Despite concerns over the economic climate, Holiday Inn is seizing the opportunity to take full advantage of its fresh new look with a Stay You global television advertising campaign, billboards, and extensive internet presence on popular websites such as Youtube. The company even hired British dance troupe Diversity - who won last year’s Britain’s Got Talent - to do a promotional video for the relaunch that has received over 70,000 online hits to date.

“Over the past few years it has felt like we have always been planning for, in the middle of or anticipating the next stage of refurbishment, but we are all truly delighted and very proud of both ourselves and our property at Holiday Inn Portsmouth,” adds Israel. “It takes an enormous amount of effort from a great many people, but everyone is incredibly enthused to be in a position to deliver a great hotel and service that our guests love.”

There IS a Cure for the Summertime Blues

Along with the joys of summer, unfortunately, comes the stifling heat and painful sunburns and pesky mosquitoes. Tom Havran, product developer for Aura Cacia, offers some ingenious aromatherapeutic tips to make your summer a little sweeter:

Beat the heat even when there’s nary an electrical outlet for an air conditioner in sight. The effectiveness of a hand-held fan can be greatly enhanced by applying a few drops of refreshing peppermint oil. And, to ward off mosquitoes, apply a few drops of insect-repelling citronella oil to the fan as well.
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Patently Alarming Olfactory Developments

“Fee! Fie! Foe! Fum! I smell the blood of an Englishman!” Thus begins Chapter 6 of Whiff! The Revolution of Scent Communication in the Information Age, Danger, Will Robinson. The familiar line from Jack and the Beanstalk draws a perfectly clear picture of how scent acts as a warning signal. The giant had obviously experienced some prior encounter involving light-fingered Brits and golden goose eggs, a negative experience which generated a lifelong dislike for the smell of Englishmen and imprinted a permanent danger or warning response which would be triggered by their natural aroma. This danger scent phenomenon is indeed a figurative goose that will lay endless golden eggs for enterprising entrepreneurs in the years to come…notably, inventors Richard E. Krock, Karl F. Rauscher, Stuart Owen Goldman, and Carlos Curtis Solari, who applied last week for Patent #20100117828. Their alarm scheme with olfactory alerting component is “an alarm system integrating the sense of smell (i.e., an olfactory component) as an alerting modality is described. The olfactory component is uniquely recognizable and distinguishable from traditional visual or audible alerting components and can be used to increase the number of separate alarms that a person can respond to and/or decrease the reaction time for responding to the alarms.”

US Army Wants to Smell Better

The Pentagon has been angling for a biosensors that can smell fear or nervousness in a person’s bodily emanations for some years, but the Army now wants something more: The ability to “uniquely identify an individual based on scent” from a distance or even days after the person has left the scene.

Human odor is a mélange of molecules that can be incredibly tricky to identify, but the army thinks that by doing so it could smell a threat coming and even sniff out an offending person who long since fled the scene of a crime. In Iraq, the Army has several cooperative methods of collecting biometric data on citizens at checkpoints – facial images, fingerprints, iris scans, etc. – but no real means of identifying those people operating outside of the law. The Identification Based on Individual Scent (IBIS) program aims to develop improved methods for identifying people from a distance with or without their cooperation.

The idea rests upon research that has shown that unique genetics create particular volatile organic compounds unique to each individual. Current technologies like the E-Nose developed under a DARPA biosensor initiative can distinguish between two different people but require a dose of smell from each person’s armpit. The Army wants something that can tap into that unique molecular signature before potential threats get close enough to harm troops.

It all sounds a bit clandestine and Big Brother-ish, but the Army sees it as a means to profile and bio-tag a prospective suicide bomber before he or she gets close to a checkpoint or hunt down insurgents using the scents they leave behind in safe houses. Not to mention, such a magic wand could have vast implications for conventional crime fighting - just wave it over the scene of a crime and you get the unique identifying molecular signature of anyone who was in the room.

Something Stinks in Tampa Bay

From Mystery Maple Syrup Scents to Mystery Methane Scents to Mystery Maple Syrup Scents combined with Mystery Methane Scents, the Whiff-Guys have been the olfactory storm chasers of inexplicable regional stink clouds. Imagine our surprise when one materialized right in our own back yard!

It all started yesterday (Monday, April 27), when Tampa Bay residents on both the Pinellas and Hillsborough side began reporting a chemical scent, describing it as smelling like everything from “oil and kerosene-like” to burnt rubber to roach spray.

“We’re trying to figure out what it is and where it is coming from,” said Peter Hessling, air quality division manager for Pinellas County Environmental Control, whose offices in downtown Clearwater got a whiff of the baffling odor too. “We’re a bit mystified.”

One theory is that fumes wafted in from last week’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s a possibility, according to Hessling, depending on the size and location of the oil plume — although, as of Monday, nothing was visible on satellite imaging.

West-northwest winds at about 25 mph came in to shore from the gulf Monday. Today and Wednesday are also expected to be breezy, with winds flowing the same direction, said Bay News 9 chief meteorologist Mike Clay, who believes without a doubt that the oil spill is the culprit. “I grew up in Texas and I know what oil smells like. And that’s oil.”

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