ILLUSTRATION: KATY WIEDEMANN. SOURCE: KENNETH R. WOOD, NATIONAL TROPICAL BOTANICAL GARDEN
BY
SARAH GIBBENS
SMELL
TELEPHONES WERE A new invention, the Model T Ford
was selling briskly, and William Howard Taft was U.S.
president the last time anyone might have smelled
a Hibiscadelphus wilderianus tree blooming in the
wild. A distant cousin of Hawaii’s famous hibiscus
flowers, the tree was native to the southern slope of Mount Hale-
akala, on the island of Maui. It’s likely that H. wilderianus went
extinct between 1910 and 1913, judging from reported sightings of
it dying along with other tree species that ranchers had slashed
to clear space for cattle.
More than a century later, a group of scientists would wonder
whether extinction was truly the end of the species’ story. What
if this plant no longer seen in the wild—found only between dry
pages in an archive—could be brought back to life, at least partially?
“We were sitting around and thinking, What if we could do
Jurassic Park?” says Christina Agapakis, the creative director at
Ginkgo Bioworks, a Boston-based biotech company. “It was this
sort of dreamy conversation, and we thought maybe we could.”
Within five years, they had opened an aromatic window to the
past. Using DNA reconstruction and synthetic biology, they resur-
rected the tart juniper scent of the vanished Hawaiian tree’s bloom.
See the facing page for a scratch-and-sniff sample of the recon-
structed H. wilderianus fragrance and descriptions of two
other plants whose scents were retrieved.
Resurrecting a smell isn’t just about smelling something that no
longer exists, says Sissel Tolaas, a researcher and artist whose Smell
Research Lab in Berlin worked with Ginkgo on the plant project.
“Through smell you engage with memory and emotion,” she says.
Calling forth a long-lost smell is a way of experiencing the extinct
feelings it might have sparked, a whiff of the past.
Today an estimated 40 percent of Earth’s plants are in danger
of going extinct, according to a 2020 report by the Royal Botanic
Gardens, Kew. Many more will disappear before scientists even
realize they exist.
BRINGING BACK WHAT WAS LOST wasn’t easy. Agapakis and her
team first had to find enough of their targets’ remains. Scientists in
the fictional Jurassic Park tapped a mosquito preserved in amber;
Agapakis first hypothesized permafrost might contain preserved
remnants of extinct plants. When that proved a dead end, she
tried the Harvard University Herbaria & Libraries, a 20-minute
drive from Ginkgo’s headquarters. In Harvard’s collection of dried
T