Following your noses to pick a state smell for Florida

We put readers’ noses to the take a look at remaining week on what Florida’s state smell must be.

The effects are in: Orange blossoms have been the preferred reaction.

• Yes, however: That’s already the state flower.

Honorable mentions integrated fried grouper, Cuban espresso, and a couple of not-so-nice runners-up: purple tide and reclaimed water.

What you are pronouncing:

• “If you ask anyone who has spent any time in Bradenton, the smell would be burning orange peels from Tropicana!” — Taryn Schnarr
• “Dry, empty, deathlike electrical sizzling before a hurricane rolls in.” — Maureen Phillips
• “Stand under a blooming Jacaranda tree in St. Pete in late Feb/early March. … It’s very similar to the sweet smell of an infant’s head.” — Ann MacKinnon

Thanks to reader Gary Mormino, who remembered a 2007 piece within the St. Petersburg Times through which Jon Wilson recollects shifting from Nebraska and using around the Gandy bridge for the primary time:

• “Through the wide-open windows of our ’53 Ford, a Tampa Bay breeze carried my first good whiff of Florida. It smelled like fish stew. It smelled like mystery. It smelled like the ocean. It smelled like a dream.”