Term:

Floral aromas
Definition:

Aromas emitted by plants to attract pollinators. These aromas can be extracted from plants by enclosing the flowers in bags or glass globes and then pumping the air from around the flowers through a tube with adsorbents. The samples are passed though a Gas Chromatograph and the chemical composition of the aromas of different flowers are identified by comparing the samples with a database of known compounds (Knudsen & Mori, 1996). There is a correlation between different floral aromas and the pollinators that visit the flowers.