What is that smell?!

Rowan artists and Monell scientists focus on fragrance at Philadelphia's famous flower show

By Rowan University

July 12^th, 2022

A feast for the eyes—and the nose

Sure, the blooms were breathtaking at the nation's most historic and prestigious flower show, but what , exactly, did they smell like? Spicy? Indolic? Herbaceous? Animalic? Just plain floral or something else?

On a bright June day in Philadelphia, visitors got a bit of help identifying blooms' fragrances and learning how to understand and describe what they sniffed amid the spectacular exhibits at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society's annual event. The Smell Fan, a sensory-centered project, was the result of a collaboration between Rowan artists and the city's Monell Center, whose scientists focus on interdisciplinary basic research of the senses of taste and smell.

Children and adults used the Rowan-Monell project to learn about what they saw and smelled.

This year's project started last year when Monell's Communications Team and Rowan students Jennifer Araya, Victoria Esquilin and Noel Waldron surveyed Flower Show visitors to study how they experienced smell—a key sense lost or diminished for many as a side effect of the Covid-19 pandemic. Using last year's data, Edelman College of Communication & Creative Arts faculty Donna Sweigart and Jen Kitson developed this year's "smell-mapping" project and, with art student Shayne Shands, brought the Smell Fan to the show in a hand-held version and a large fragrance wheel at the booth sponsored by Monell.

A Flower Show visitor outfitted with the decor of the day and a Smell Fan.

Of course, the Smell Fan helped cool visitors strolling through the show at FDR Park, but its primary purpose as a botanical fragrance field guide helped Flower Show visitors of all ages to explore and describe their smell experience. With illustrations by Shands organized around 10 botanical categories drawn from "The Scentual Garden" by Ken Druse, the fragrance wheel included popular crowd-sourced smell descriptions that Rowan and Monell collected last year.

The 10 smell cues on the fan include many people's favorite and familiar: rosy, citrus, fruity, sweet—and some startling but spot-on adjectives: rotten, musty, yeasty, fishy, metallic.

Kitson, who also teaches in the department of Geography, Planning & Sustainability, explained, "The fan is a conversation piece, an opening for talking about smell experience—memory, emotion and place—plus smell loss due to Covid-19 and the ways the sense of smell is critical to human health and well-being."

The Smell Fan spelled out clues and tips for identifying fragrances and odors, and provided links to information about native plants and pollinators.

The Monell and Rowan team, from left: Joe Boback, Shayne Shands, Jen Kitson, Donna Sweigart, Ahmed Barakat, Ha Ngyuen and Karen Kreeger.

Sweigart, who with Kitson wrote a grant proposal to help support the Smell Fan, saw the project delight Flower Show visitors and help them discover science and their own sense of smell in a new way.

"Monell is trying to bring more awareness to smell science. It was a pleasure to partner with their team and illustrate with visuals and language how we experience smell," she said. "By encouraging people to take just an extra moment to think about their sense of smell, we provided a new way for children and adults to have fun and learn about themselves and their world."