The gardenia is a coffee relative that Freud named his favourite flower
Gardenias belong to the same plant family as coffee. Their heavy night-time perfume evolved to lure moths, yet it has also adorned Parisian evening suits, Gilded Age buttonholes and Hattie McDaniel's hair when she became the first African American to win an Academy Award.
The genus Gardenia sits in Rubiaceae, the coffee family, and grows wild across tropical and subtropical Africa, Asia, Madagascar, the Pacific Islands and Australia. As of July 2022, Plants of the World Online recognised 128 species. Most are shrubs or small trees, but some in New Guinea reach 20 to 30 metres, a few African species are fire-adapted subshrubs, and Gardenia epiphytica from Gabon and Cameroon grows perched on other plants. The name honours the Scottish naturalist Alexander Garden; Jane Colden first suggested it to Linnaeus in 1753, though she often goes uncredited.
Garden varieties carry large white, cream or pale yellow blooms whose strong scent often intensifies after dark, a typical trait of flowers pollinated by moths. Each flower holds both male and female parts. Many Pacific species ooze golden resin droplets rich in flavonols and triterpenes onto their buds; ecologists have studied how these secretions deter plant-eating insects, and oil from Gardenia jasminoides repels whiteflies and mites. Gardenia gordonii, one of several critically endangered Fijian species, secretes a flavonol called gordonin.
Gardenia jasminoides, the familiar cape jasmine, is notoriously fussy indoors. It needs high humidity, bright indirect light, acidic, well-drained soil and daytime temperatures of about 20 to 23 degrees Celsius. Indoors it stays under 18 inches, while outdoors in suitable climates it can grow to 6 feet, and a splash of water turns its petals brown. In East Asia its fruit yields a yellow dye for cloth and food, including Korean mung bean jelly, and features in traditional Chinese medicine.
Culture has embraced the flower. French men traditionally wear one as a boutonniere with evening dress, and Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence depicts New York gentlemen doing the same. The tiki pioneer Donn Beach reportedly spent $7,800 on gardenia leis over four years around 1938. Mo'Nique later wore gardenias to accept her own Oscar in tribute to McDaniel.
Source: Gardenia
