By Sammie Yen, Correspondent
Stop and smell the flowers.
Or, as the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden invites, smell the plumerias at its 12th annual Plumeria Festival, running from 4 to 8 p.m. Friday, July 17, and from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, July 18.
Visitors can tour the grove, watch live entertainment, participate in lei-making demonstrations and attend expert talks about growing and maintaining plumerias.
Also known as “frangipani,” plumerias bloom in yellow, pink, red and white, often several colors on a single flower, with each variety carrying its own scent. The Arboretum’s grove, made up of over 100 trees, is now the largest public plumeria collection west of the Mississippi.
Jim Henrich, the Arboretum’s curator of living collections, has organized the festival every year since its first edition in 2014. What began as simple grove tours has grown into a full celebration of the plant’s cultural traditions.
“I’ve always had an interest in leis,” Henrich said. “I worked at the Conservatory of Flowers in San Francisco for five and a half years. We brought over one of the primary lei makers from Hawaii, and she was a sort of cultural institution. That got me interested in it at the beginning.”
His interest deepened through plumeria donor Artuo Martinez, a fragrance chemist from Cuba surrounded by plumerias, plants his grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles all kept. Years later, driving to work one day, he spotted a pile of plumeria cuttings on the roadside and pulled over. The scent brought his childhood rushing back, and he began collecting the plants himself, eventually donating nearly 80 of them to the Arboretum – the seed of today’s grove.
The cultural emphasis carries through the weekend’s programming, with entertainment representative of plumeria’s native roots in Hawaii, Mexico and India. Tours run in English, Mandarin and Spanish, include one talk focused on plumeria cultivars significant to Hawaiian culture.
Henrich said each visitor experiences the flowers differently, as the scents range from floral to fruity.
“Everybody’s ability to detect fragrances is different,” he said. “It’s almost as broad as you can imagine what the fragrances are going to be.”
Food trucks, plant sales, plumeria societies and master gardeners round out the event. Admission is included with general Arboretum entrance and is free for members.
“Come enjoy,” Henrich said, “and be plumerified.”
Sammie Yen is a correspondent with the Southern California News Group.