A reader, Ellen, reports that there is an interesting odor at the corner of 23rd and Folsom:
Well I noticed that it is that time of year when the corner at 23rd and Folsom St. smells like male ejaculate… If you think I am being nuts, go stand there and take a whiff for yourself. It totally smells like jizz. It has something to do with the trees growing on that street and it happens every year for a few weeks over June-July.
While I personally cannot verify this, our very own Allan Hough claims to have “heard tales of the jizz tree before.”
Scroll down to “Reports From The Fringe.”
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/569/i-want-to-get-my-nipples-pierced-are-there-health-risks
I have experienced the smell of a similar tree. There’s a stretch on Highway 9 in the Santa Cruz Mountains that smells of semen for a bit every year.
Male gingko bilboa trees.
I’m pretty sure it’s the female ginko trees that are the stinky ones. And they’re more like vomit than semen.
i’ve been smelling this every morning lately on my bike ride to work. i’ve heard that chestnut blossoms have a smell similar to semen. any chestnut trees in bloom?
San Francisco has come (cum?) trees, too? In Davis, it’s non-fruiting pear trees. They’re all over the town and they reek when it gets warm enough for them to flower, which in the 530 is more of a springtime event.
(Allan, ask your sister, she’ll confirm. It is godawful.)
yeah, i was just going to say there are a lot of those trees in davis.
True that about the Davis “cumbleberry” trees.
I can confirm the existence of this “cum” tree as well. It is a peculiar west coast tradition as I’ve never heard of them back east. Way less cool than those plants that smell like weed.
ever notice that persimmons smell like cum, too?
I smell that fucking tree every day. It kinda bums me out.
Could somebody please post pictures of the tree they see as the culprit?
wow you guys are really slow on this. Its been a meme on CL for years. I love those trees and especially love that short block. The trees are adjacent to a garden that is part of the weird trapezoidal plots left behind by the old railroad. Whoever works the garden has tended the trees and somehow convinced the concrete contractor doing some work there recently to leave open space that they then planted.
It’s all very lovely and the pungent aroma adds to its mystique. Not every year is the same, this year came late, like 10 days ago, last year not much of any odor, 2 years ago it was more around April and strong.
At one time I knew the species, I had stumbled on it reading something else. I want to say Chinese Chestnut but after a ten minute net search I can’t say for sure and my memory has completely failed me. The search did identify at least 4 different specious of cum trees, an urban dictionary citation, and evidence of them in Boston, Portland and LA
The bathrooms in the Castro smell better.
The above poster is right: it’s the non-fruiting, white-flowered Bartlett pear tree that gives off that special smell.
FWIW, Bartlett pears are also an invasive species, at least on the east coast. http://www.invasive.org/eastern/species/10957.html
Now is the perfect time to link to this Mitchell & Webb sketch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHze0SqB5Zg