Gardening | Savor the scent of chocolate in your garden
Open your patio door and step out into the fragrance of chocolate. You can. A garden or container planted with chocolate-scented plants will make it happen.
Chocolate comes from the tropical Theobroma cacao plant, which grows within 20 degrees of the equator, largely in Africa (70 percent of the world’s production), South America and Southeast Asia. Cacao plants require good drainage, high humidity and regular rainfall. Interestingly, flowers are pollinated by flies, not bees.
Cacao plants produce fruit, which the industry calls pods. They take four to five months to grow and several more weeks to ripen. Each pod contains 30 to 50+ seeds — we call them beans. The beans must be properly fermented before they can be processed into chocolate. It then takes several hundred beans to make a pound of chocolate.
Common name alone sometimes suggests a plant for a chocolate-themed garden. For example, the Chocolate Scented Pelargonium is really a scented geranium with a chocolate-colored spot on each leaf, not a chocolate-scented pelargonium. Don’t be misled by plant names. A typical chocolate-themed garden often turns out to be a collection of plants with dark or chocolate-colored blooms and leaves.
Actually, few plants smell like chocolate, but among those that do, here are three well-suited for our coastal Carolina yards and containers.
Chocolate vine, Akebia quinata, was brought to the United States in 1845 and has since escaped cultivation. It blooms in spring with reddish to purple brown flowers with a fragrance likened to chocolate. Be wary. It grows as ground cover and a twining vine. It is reported invasive in six nearby states. The risk of invasiveness is stronger than its chocolate fragrance.
If you like your chocolate to smell intensely minty with only a suggestion of chocolate, grow chocolate mint. It is a perennial in Zones 3-11. It needs full sun to part shade and fertile moist soil. Mint is invasive, so grow it in a pot. It will spill nicely over the edge. Flowers are unexciting white, lavender or pink.
Two house plants that have a genuinely chocolatey fragrance are “Sharry Baby,” an onsidium orchid and Hoya carnosa, commonly called a wax plant. Their fragrance will fill a room. Buy them from a florist or full-service nursery.
Chocolate hull mulch adds intensity to chocolate fragrance for a couple of weeks on indoor and outdoor plants. Take care using it if you have pets. The shells contain caffeine and Theobromine, two chemicals that are highly toxic to dogs and cats, especially in large amounts.
Our sense of smell, perhaps more than any other, powers the recall of memories. Have some wicked fun with a chocolate-scented container by your front door, or invite friends to share a chocolate-scented spot on your patio. Who knows what conversation will follow?
This story was originally published April 3, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Gardening | Savor the scent of chocolate in your garden ."