When I glanced outside early this morning it looked like we'd had a dusting of snow overnight. The paving was white and all the nearby plants were flecked with 'snowflakes'. Then, when I opened the back door and stepped outside the powerfully sweet (some would say sickly sweet) subtropical scent of murraya in bloom seized me by the nose.
It's not an alluring, classy gentle scent like a frangipani's – murraya has a cheap scent, too abundant and too strong. Yet it is one of the scents of summer here in Sydney, and this year's murraya flowering has been the best in many years. Everywhere I go around town right now these big, glossy green shrubs are covered with fragrant white blooms, and they're at their peak here at our place today.
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| I know many of my friends in the USA and UK are having a terrible time with bitter winter winds and snow drifts piling up against their doors, so sorry if my mention of 'snow' is as welcome as yet another snowstorm, but that was my first thought on seeing this scene today. |
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| The bush has been building up to this little avalanche of white petals for several days. This is a weekend cluster of buds straining to be set free – one of many. |
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| And this morning they've been allowed out. It'll all be over in a few days, which is a good thing, as the scent is very strong, but as I know it's here for just a couple of days I do enjoy it. |
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| Standing back a few feet, this is the shrub in its awful spot. I really do need to point out that this murraya is planted at the foot of a large olive tree, gets nowhere near enough sun, its roots are cramped and competed with by the olive. It's a pretty horrible spot for any shrub yet that's the beauty of the murrayas in Sydney. They'll grow almost anywhere. The level of flowering on mine in well down on the ones in full sun, which are evenly coated in white blooms. |
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| This part of the murraya, above the pergola roof, gets more sun and so flowering is a bit better. |
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| You don't see a lot of bromeliads dusted in snow, do you? While I was taking this photo I was being steadily showered with fragrant, falling white petals. The coating of the pergola area's paving will eventually be so thick that I'll be scooping up many whole dustpans full of them in a few days' time. |
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| Out the front of our house, the murraya hedge is as blandly evergreen as ever. Murrayas are a very popular hedging plant in Sydney because they grow so well here, but the price you pay with murraya hedges is that they hardly flower. When I looked closely there were about a dozen flowers on this whole 3-metre long hedge right now. The regular clipping hedges need cuts off the flower buds, and with the rate of growth of murrayas in summer, they do need clipping back quite often. |
5 comments:
I agree with your description: a "sweet (some would say sickly sweet) subtropical scent". And of course, the flowers smell strongest at night - especially the 'sickly' part of the scent. Arriving here for a weekend visit one recent evening, my stepson thought that the overpowering smell when he got out of his car was perhaps a malfunctioning septic system! The smell of murrayas at certain times in the flowers' life cycle does in fact sit on the fence between sweet and yukky. Like you, I love them. But I'm also pleased the flowering period is short.
Yes it is funny how suddenly every street is just full of these in full bloom. We have a couple of large trees, which look beautiful. However I have to agree with Chartreuse about the overwhelming aroma, especially on the balmy nights,we always joke that it is akin to sitting next to someone who has marinated in stale perfume! I know when daughter arrives for a visit this weekend she will start sneezing the minute she gets on our driveway...she finds it overwhelming, as well as the Jasmine aroma!
Whilst the Murraya hedges don't flower as such, I love them for the absolute speed with which you can establish a thick hardy hedge. In less than 18 months our new driveway was transformed.
Thank you for blogging about this - I've been stepping through drifts of murraya blooms all over Annandale for the past two days and wondering what they were. I love the scent, although I don't have to live with it. Yesterday I stopped out the front of another house on my street just to breathe it in for a few moments. Beautiful.
I had to laugh at this post because the Murrayas (or Mock Oranges as I've always called them) are flowering up here in Queensland too, and after all the wind we've been having the petals end up all over the place.
However I think they look less like snow and more like toenail clippings owing to the crescent shape. Not as lovely a picture to imagine as snow though, right?! ;)
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