Calle de las Gardenias

The gardenia is a glossy-leaved shrub with a waxy white flower, famous for a dense scent that fills a whole room from a single bud. It reached Europe from East Asia in the eighteenth century and soon became a greenhouse luxury, the flower gentlemen wore in their formal lapels. The street belongs to a cluster of flower streets in Valdeacederas, where plant names recur, such as Magnolia or Azucenas. These names were handed out during the twentieth-century development, largely to resolve the duplicates left by the absorption of the old town of Chamartín de la Rosa. The flower served as a kindly label, and kept the memory of the orchards that covered these hills before the asphalt.