Lovers of rare and precious living things are often torn between sharing the love and selfishly keeping it to themselves. Their preference is not to see the thing any more threatened than it already is.

Alternatively, there’s the argument that something so unusually beautiful is best protected when more people know of its presence. That sowing the seed of knowledge can only be a good thing.

This is the reason for Fragrant Notes, a monthly column highlighting a fragrant Tasmanian plant you’ve probably never heard of; ever hopeful that if we can close our eyes for a few seconds, remove our digital gaze to take in the fragrant beauty of the world around us through our noses, that the world will be a better place.

I was first told to look out for the white Forget-me-not by an Eastcoaster who volunteers with the Bicheno Landcare group. Living in Swansea then, steam distilling native plants for fragrance, experimenting to see if they could be good enough for perfume. In a hushed voice, one I took as reverence, Liz told me that in springtime I should keep an eye to the ground for the tiniest flower with the most magical aroma. How wonderful it would be to capture that?

I made many a walk among the east coast low hills and back roads and it was on one of those walks, where you’re not even looking, head down buried in dreams, that I eventually spotted the tiny white Forget-me-not. In fact, I smelled her first. In between the paddock rocks, under a she oak copse, it seemed hardly possible that anything beautiful could grow. But this is the seduction of the Australian bush, how a seemingly uniform appearance seen from a distance can reward immensely when you learn to zoom in.

Down on bended knee, pushing nose to petals only slightly bigger than a pinhead. The perky native white Forget-me-not beckoned, calling out in a heady scent more usually associated with northern hemisphere exotics like gardenia, jasmine and lily of the valley.

Spring flowering in dry forests, tough yet delicate, blooming in blue and pink too (though, in my experience, only the white is heavily scented), Myosotis australis or Austral Forget-me-not doesn’t grow in picking quantities. Perhaps one day we might see her spreading more wildly in paddocks because landowners care to see her. Or, else the white Forget-me-not will be more widely grown in gardens. Maybe even bred for fragrance?

It's an old saying but a good one. Take time to smell the Roses – or Forget-me-nots in this case – you never know where it may lead.