The "snail rice noodle" flavored with cherry blossoms has attracted attention, and the bees are silent...

Audit expert: Shi Jun

Doctor of Botany, well-known popular science writer

March is the season when cherry blossoms are in full bloom. The sun is shining and it’s the weekend, so you invite a few friends to go to the Cherry Blossom Hill in the park to take photos, enjoy the flowers, and breathe some fresh air.

When we arrived at the park and just came to the foot of the hill planted with cherry blossoms, we smelled a strong "aroma". It tasted very much like the snail noodles I had just eaten at noon, but I looked around and didn't see anyone setting up a stall. It was not until we walked under the cherry tree that we realized that the "stall owner" turned out to be the lovely pink and white cherry blossoms!

Source: hippopx

The above scenario is likely to happen in the near future, because not long ago, a video published by the Zhejiang Academy of Forestry became a hot search on Weibo. The experts in the video claimed that they had successfully bred a cherry blossom variety that could emit the smell of snail rice noodle, named "snail rice noodle", and said that it would be officially put on the market soon...

In response to this, netizens said, "Those who like cherry blossoms and those who like snail noodles are all silent."

Source: Weibo

What is cherry blossom?

"Cherry blossom" refers to the general term for plants of the Prunus subgen. Cerasus of the Rosaceae family. There are many varieties cultivated for ornamental purposes all over the world, such as mountain cherry blossom, weeping cherry blossom, Yunnan early cherry blossom, Tokyo cherry blossom, Somei Yoshino, etc.

Cherry blossoms prefer warm and humid climates. They are mainly distributed in the temperate zones of the Northern Hemisphere and are commonly found in Asia, Europe and North America. Cherry blossom leaves are mostly oval in shape with serrated edges. The petals are distributed in umbrella shapes and the inflorescences are compact. The main colors are white, pink and red.

Source: hippopx

The flowering period of cherry blossoms is mainly concentrated in March and April in spring. When the flowers bloom, they will cover the branches. Because the flowers are very close together, if there is a large area of ​​cherry blossom forest, a sea of ​​pink and white flowers will emerge in spring. At the end of the flowering period, countless petals will slowly fall down, and the fallen petals are colorful and beautiful.

Source: hippopx

Cherry blossoms are fresh and elegant in color, and have a very light fragrance, almost to the point of nonexistent. Since ancient times, they have been loved by countless Chinese literati and poets. In modern times, cherry blossoms have often appeared in various love-themed film and television works, and have therefore become widely known to people. When going out for a spring outing to enjoy the flowers, the cherry blossom groves in full bloom are often the best choice for a trip.

Why do cherry blossoms taste like snail noodles?

After learning about cherry blossoms, let’s talk about cherry blossoms with the flavor of snail noodles.

Experts did not explain why the newly cultivated cherry blossoms have the smell of snail noodles. The video only mentioned: "The new variety of cherry blossoms has a strong fragrance, which may smell similar to snail noodles from a distance, so it is named "snail noodles".

The key is "a smell similar to that of snail rice noodle". We know that the taste of snail rice noodle is related to the sour bamboo shoots in it. In the study, scientists found that the volatile components in pickled and fermented bamboo shoots include alcohols, acids, esters, ketones, aldehydes, phenols, olefins, ethers and other substances. Many of these substances have a bad and pungent smell, such as butyric acid in acids and methyl linoleate in esters.

The mixture of various odorous substances is the main source of the unbearable smell of snail rice noodle. Therefore, we can boldly guess that the new variety of cherry blossoms may also contain a certain concentration of substances with bad and pungent odors, making the blooming cherry blossoms smell like snail rice noodle.

Source: pixabay

Of course, there is no authoritative explanation for the origin of the cherry blossom flavor of "snail noodles", and we are just guessing here. Maybe in the near future, we can see and smell this "snail noodles with cherry blossom flavor" with our own eyes.

These flowers also smell bad.

In addition to the cherry blossoms that taste like snail noodles, there are some other flowers in nature that are gorgeous, but their taste is as hard to describe as snail noodles.

1. Heather

Heather belongs to the genus Heather in the subfamily Apple of the family Rosaceae. Its inflorescence is spherical and white in color. It prefers a warm and humid climate. The flowering period of heather is generally in March and April. Although heather is a delicate and lovely ornamental plant, it is not very popular because it emits a strong fishy smell when it blooms, which makes people dizzy when they get close to it.

There is still no definite conclusion on the chemical substance that makes heather produce this smell, but trimethylamine has been found in flowers of the same subfamily that emit a fishy smell, so it is speculated that the fishy smell of heather is likely to come from trimethylamine.

Source: Photo by Liu Bing from China Plant Image Database

2. Geranium

Geranium is a herbaceous plant of the genus Geranium in the family Geranium. It is also known as stinking hydrangea and wax red. The leaves are usually alternate, mostly fan-shaped, with cracks on the edges and horseshoe-shaped rings on the surface. The inflorescence is umbrella-shaped, and the flowers are star-shaped or funnel-shaped. Due to the wide variety of geraniums, the flower colors are very rich, but red is still the most common. One of the varieties, commonly known as Tutian, will emit a strong fishy smell if you pat it with your hands, which makes people frown.

Source: China Plant Image Database Photographed by Chen Yousheng

3. Marigold

Also known as stinking hibiscus, stinking hibiscus, belongs to the genus Tagetes of the Asteraceae family, an annual herb with an upright and sturdy stem, pinnate leaves, a small number of glands along the leaf margins, solitary capitula, and two types of flower shapes: tongue-shaped and tubular. The flower colors are usually yellow and red with yellow edges. Although marigolds are gorgeous and beautiful, they release a pungent odor when they bloom, which makes many people dislike them. However, marigold petals coated with flour and egg liquid and fried in a pan are a special delicacy.

Source: China Plant Image Database Photographed by Li Guangmin

4. Lantana camara

Lantana, belonging to the Verbenaceae family, is an upright or creeping shrub originally produced in tropical America. In China, Lantana is widely distributed in Guangxi, Guangdong, Fujian and other places. The inflorescence is spherical, the flower shape is small, and the color is very rich. There are many colors such as yellow, orange, red, purple, pink, etc. on a cluster of inflorescences . Therefore, Lantana is also called five-color plum.

Source: Photo by Song Ding from China Plant Image Database

Although Lantana is colorful and very pleasing to the eye, if you put your nose close to it, you will smell a smell similar to mint or dried chicken manure, so many places also call Lantana chicken shit flower or stinking flower. The "stink" of Lantana comes from some terpenoid compounds contained in its leaves, and it is precisely because of this strange smell that many insects stay away from it.

In our impression, gorgeous and beautiful flowers are always accompanied by rich fragrance, but now it seems that there are always a few kinds that do not follow the routine. Even when facing the flowers we are familiar with, we have to worry whether it has been made to smell like stinky tofu by "technology and hard work".