We’ve become accustomed to them popping up in spring but folks in and around the inner burbs of various Australian cities are being treated to an early autumn appearance from an old foe to the senses: The deeply smelly Cum Tree.
The blossoming tree — an Ornamental, or Bradford, or Callery Pear for those of you keeping score at home — lines the streets in many inner-city suburbs. Once a year (for around 4-6 weeks) they begin blooming and emit an unmistakable pong that those of you who have ever been a hog-cranking teenager (or been in the bedroom of one) will recognise instantly as the stink of hot jizz.
Usually, these trees get to blooming in spring to mark the return of the warmer weather. But for some reason this year the unmissable stank has wafted across many a schnoz on the opposite side of the season cycle.
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It’s one of those smells where once your nose recognises it, it can never unsmell it. The link is inextricable. The association is undeniable. These trees absolutely reek of cum, and the only way to escape it is to hold your breath and keep walking.
Around Australia, and Melbourne in particular, the all-too-familiar scent has started to hit the late March breeze. Surely the ornamental pear hasn’t gotten itself all twisted and decided to throw out its whiffy flowers this early in the piece, right?
My horticulturalist friend recently made the suggestion to the group chat that perhaps what we’re sniffing on the crisp autumn air isn’t actually the ornamental pear — the usual suspect in the spreading of spoof-scented aromas. It might actually be another spunk in the neighbourhood.
That tree? The unassuming carob tree.
Yep, those dogshit treats that health-food-shop parents would put in lunchboxes in place of a little chocolate apparently also have flowers that emit the heady stench of cum. Good, great.
Unlike the ornamental pear, the carob tree blossoms in March and April. Which would give a pretty good reason as to why we’re suddenly getting smacked up the nostrils with something akin to a young cranker’s bedroom in the heat of summer.
The carob tree produces a bright red flower — unlike the pear’s delicate off-white aesthetic — and lets off a “musky” smell to attract bees and other pollinators. Damn right it’s musky. Muskier than a hidden drawer full of unwashed odd socks.
Whoever dealt it, it’s certainly a beautiful, eye-opening thing: The smell of life reborn, and also of cum. The trees as ubiquitous with the Aussie nature experience as cut grass, hayfever and daylight savings. The trees that smell like jizz, that is. They fucken reek of it. An almighty pong.
All pollinating trees tend to emit some sort of fragrance in a bid to attract insects and bugs and the like, which is why the ornamental pear (and apparently the carob) throws off its full-on dick smell. But while most plants have a slightly more pleasant perfume to them, these sploogey bastards emit chemicals called trimethylamine and dimethylamine.
As it turns out, both those things smell like ammonia. Which is also what healthy cum smells like, if you’ve got your pH levels right in the old ballsack.
Why the cum trees chose to smell that way — that way being like a horrible rope of party wee — is another question entirely.
But it cannot be denied: the hanging aroma of jizz is in the air twice a year, without fail.
Nature, mates. How about it.
