Thursday 7 June 2012

Night-Scented Socks


When the weather finally turned into summer a couple of weeks ago, I planted the Night-Scented Stock seeds on our kitchen window-cill as I do every year, and waited for the unassuming little flowers to appear and flood the room with their wonderful nocturnal perfume.  We'll have to wait for the festival season to be over - as is the Jubilee - until it stops raining again like we do every year, but the blossoms haven't appeared yet anyway.

I had a girlfriend who used to refer to these plants as 'Night-Scented Socks' - ha ha.

Years ago, I read that Night Stock only released it's scent in the dark in order to be pollinated by moths, but I don't know how true that is.  I certainly see bees around them in the daylight, but I can't think why it should only be scented at night, and bees seem to be attracted by colour.  They do close up a bit after the sun has risen, though.

Ironically (there seems to be a lot of irony in my life) the evening breeze only pushes into the kitchen when there is a somewhat easterly wind, and if the wind comes from the east, it is usually cold and raining - not the ideal weather for a heavy, soporific perfume.  On a warm summer night, 90% of the fragrance drifts over the building sites away from the house.  I hope they appreciate it.

It is difficult - not to say impossible - to describe the perfume produced by Night-Scented Stock, but the closest artificial experience I have had to it was listening to an all night concert of classical Indian music (evening rag, of course) when they burnt a good quality Sandalwood to accompany the doleful melody.  It is verging on a crime to burn Sandalwood in the day.

We were all sitting around on the carpet of a large house in town, and the sitar player began explaining the story behind one tune, for the benefit of us English.

"A young man arranges to meet his sweetheart on a bridge,"  he began,  "and to start with, he is full of hope and optimism at her arrival.  Then, as the sun goes down - slowly slowly - he begins to understand that she will not be coming, and he sinks into deep despair."


And how accurate that story was.  The tale only took about 10 seconds to relate, but we lived it out in real time, and with real emotions.  We were that young man for the whole two hours.

Rather like there being two sounds to the ring of a good bell - one from the metal and one from somewhere else - there were two fragrances in the air that night.  One came from the Sandalwood, and the other was the pure essence of femininity - that's the only way I can describe it.

Oh well, back to the wind and rain of an English summer.


20 comments:

  1. One used to be able to buy NSS as an Essential Oil. You could cheat!

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  2. Night-Scented Stock, eh? I must check it out. Never heard of it before. Although I have heard of Night Socks... they're the rather stinky things that crawl out of my husband's work boots every evening.

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    1. Send me your address and I'll send you some seeds. (probably illegal). They are WONDERFUL.

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  3. Gorgeous tale Tom. Sometimes I think you may be as cyclical as a female, from grumpy, ragged 'thing' to telling that ten second fecund tale that (nearly) had me in tears. P'rhaps it is just a storyteller's gift.
    Maybe you are female?
    Do tell Cro. :-) Go on.

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    1. My luscious lips are sealed (unless the usual payment fails to arrive).

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    2. I'm cyclical, but I'm not monthly. You'll have to wait about another 115 years before I come around again.

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  4. "night scented socks eh!!"
    "hoho, hehe, haha!!! what a hoot!"

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  5. Just for a minute you got carried away there Tom. Glad to hear your socks are not up yet - I have various seeds planted and they are none of them appearing. I think it is just too cold and wet.

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    1. Mine have sprouted, but it will be a week or two before they really decide to arrive.

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  6. Night Scented Stock are gorgeous. Tom I remember you posting a picture of some you planted last year. I like scented flowers. Hope they do well. The scent is usually more intense after the rain.

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    1. Well the rain's pretty intense right now, as is the 60 MPH wind...

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  7. What a little Alan Titchmarsh you are Tom .....do you grow anything else other than smelly stocks ?

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  8. What a mine of useful romantic information you are, Tom. Night Scented Stocks and Sitars -- elegant!

    A friend of mine was asked if she was a man or a woman. She replied, "Yes!"

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    1. Take a look at the elbows - that's always a giveaway.

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  9. I love the scent of night-scented stocks too. My late father always planted them by the (sitting room) windows of our married quarters wherever he was posted. Lovely memories of their heady scent on the early evening air. Somehow quite 'un-English' in the intensity - almost oriental. In recent years I liked to take bunches of them to my widowed mother whenever I saw them on sale. Though these bought 'cut' flowers are always scented in the day as well.( Possibly a newer or different variety.) Mmmmn.

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    1. So you were married to your father? Or have I got that wrong? You are more elegant than I thought.

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  10. I've grown these for years, as the scent attracts the moths, and the bats eat the moths and I like moths. But... a friend has just asked how the plants know that it's night. And she's right. What biochemical pathways moderate scent release?
    Hmmm... can't find anything on the net about it!

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