Roman Kaiser, a chemist at the Givaudan Research Centre in Diibendorf, Switzerland, has recreated the scents of hundreds of rare and endangered plants in his laboratory, some of which he describes in his latest book. Here he explains how he preserves the smell of disappearing flora. A third of all flowering plants are expected to become extinct by the middle of this century. Plants are essential for life, so preserving their biodiversity is as important as preventing climate change. My book Scent of the Vanishing Flora collects olfactory descriptions for 267 rare and endangered plants (selected from 500 I've studied), a few of which no longer exist in nature.
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