The Smelling the Bouquet exhibition (on view May 2, 2025 through March 31, 2026) explores the spectrum of scents plants create, inspired by the diverse live and scientific collections at the Missouri Botanical Garden. The gardens outdoors offer renowned fragrant plants that have been a part of human culture for millennia, such as roses, jasmine, and water lilies. The Garden’s conservatories protect and display unique and rare plants from around the globe that provide new opportunities for Garden botanists and horticulturists to study and analyze their scents to understand pollinator interactions and what VOCs they may create and emit. Garden botanists carry out this scent research on plants in Madagascar, which is today also the center of production for one of the most famous and identifiable scents in the world, Madagascar vanilla. The Garden’s Herbarium specimens, together with scent-related objects, intersect the artistry and the botany behind the human culture of scent.
Learn More