Do You Remember What Carnations Smelled Like?

Having just come through the Christmas season, everyone has left-over floral arrangements and centerpieces, including my mom.  I commented to her that it still looked nice, and she said she had pulled out the flowers that had already faded.  But guess which flowers were all still completely intact, seemingly as fresh as ever?

And then I made that futile move that I have made probably hundreds of times in the last 20 or 30 years -- I bent down to take a whiff, vainly hoping that just this once, for once, a carnation would actually smell like -- well, like a carnation.  
But you know what the outcome was, don't you. Nothing.  Nada.  Beautiful, but sterile.

Do you remember what carnations smelled like, once upon a time, before the floral industry started breeding for durability and long-lastingness, before that wonderful, incredible fragrance was completely bred out of them?  It's hard to describe, and, unfortunately, I pretty much have to do it from memory.  A combination of clove, vanilla, maybe cinnamon, and I'm not sure what else.  Carnation.  They smelled like themselves, nothing else really like it at all.  Spicy is how I would describe the fragrance for want of better adjectives.  Ahh, but such a delicious fragrance!  And how sad it sometimes makes me to think that I might never smell that scent again.

We know that the sense of smell is one of the most primitive, and one of the very last to go.  That is why a scent, perhaps even more than an old song, can take us right back to some long buried or forgotten memory.  I remember once I held up a stem of Tuberose for a friend to take a whiff.  Now I personally adore the scent of Tuberose, and I thought he would enjoy it, too.  Imagine my surprise when a distressed and rather distasteful look came over his face and he announced that it smelled like dead people!  Certainly not what I was expecting, especially given the almost cloying sweetness of Tuberose.  Come to find out, while it is not really a traditional flower in funereal arrangements here in the U.S., it is commonly used in Central America, where my friend is from; and with some more probing and exploring, we realized the scent of my beloved Tuberose, (which, for me, takes me back to happy memories of the casita of my very favorite and beloved aunt where she lived in Mexico and had them growing all around) --  had taken him right back to his own dear mother's funeral, which, tragically, had occurred far too young for all concerned, as he was only 11 at the time and had been left an orphan.  Whew!  So we see how powerful olfactory memories can be.

Which brings me back to carnations.  Here is where I put out my plea to you, one and all:

If anyone can help me find any old-fashioned carnations, please do it!  I would thank you, my mother would thank you, and our happy noses would thank you...