#I'm convinced that food scents are so popular in perfumery right now because they're the only scents that remind us of anything REAL

[stellaluna33]

In addition to not knowing what violets smell like, a lot of people don't seem to know what they LOOK like either. Here is an ongoing list of (wrong) flowers I've seen on products FOR SALE that are ostensibly "violet-scented":

African violet (biologically unrelated and odorless), pansy (genus does not equal species, also odorless), violas or "johnny-jump-ups" (AGAIN genus does not equal species, and ALSO odorless), irises, crocuses...!

The first one (African violet), while frustrating, is almost forgivable because they at least look SOMEWHAT similar (which is why this totally unrelated plant was given the NAME "violet" in the first place) and actually have the word "violet" in the name, but the others? The don't even look anything alike! Besides being... sometimes purple.

We are so disconnected from the natural world around us... It's weird to me that a flower that was SO ICONIC for millennia has fallen so utterly into obscurity. And mostly because it's no longer sold commercially. We only recognize flowers we can buy in a store.

Meanwhile, violets grow all over people's yards like weeds, and we spray them with weedkiller because they're not grass.