• Question: why do forests some times smell cooked rice

    Asked by 263heaa27 to Mel, Dorcas on 24 Sep 2014.
    • Photo: Melissa Kapulu

      Melissa Kapulu answered on 24 Sep 2014:

      @263heaa27 I have also always wondered this and I have never found a scientific explanation. BUT I will try and give you an answer provided by an old folk tale I was told (totally unscientific) and another my attempt to understanding the source of the smell.

      First of all, I am not sure it is quite a smell of rice but the smell is close to cooking rice. So the very non-scientific answer. I was told that it is a smell for snakes. Can you believe??? Not sure how true this is but it definitely scarred me and made me very cautious about being in the forest and smelling this. Maybe the whole point of me being told the story was not to wander in forests (LOL!).

      And for the almost scientific explanation (but needs to be backed by actual scientific facts. HEY! Maybe you could test this out. It would make for a cool experiment). I think it is probably a mixture of moisture in the air, mixing up with mould growing on trees and mulching of leaves on the forest floor. Sounds scientific doesn’t it…..

      But I should say you have got me seriously thinking on this one 🙂

    • Photo: Dorcas Kamuya

      Dorcas Kamuya answered on 28 Sep 2014:

      @263heaa,
      Micro- and macro-organisms in the soil (such as bacteria, worms); minerals in the soil (such as iron, magnesium, phosphates); humidity, water and decomposing matter such as leaves, barks, dead animals lead to different smells of forest, one of which might be of cooked rice, other people may smell it differently. The type of smell emitted depends on several things such as type of soil, the material that is decomposing, the – for example, you could smell cooked rice from iron-rich soil at the onset of rains. Decomposition of matter is important in releasing minerals to the soil which are then used in plant growth.
      Dorcas

Comments