Calle del Nardo

The tuberose gives its name to this short street in La Ventilla-Almenara, and the flower holds more history than the street itself. Why this name was chosen for this stretch has not been documented: it appears alongside other streets of small flora in the neighborhood, among them the nearby Travesía del Nardo, in an area where the street plan drew on botany. The tuberose is a white, fleshy plant with a warm, almost narcotic scent that opens and gives off its perfume at night. The pre-Hispanic cultures of Mexico domesticated it long before it reached Europe. In Spain it was acclimatized in the sixteenth century by the Portuguese-born physician Simón de Tovar, in a garden on the outskirts of Seville that served as a stopover for American plants before they passed to the royal gardens of Philip II. Its essence is among the most expensive in perfumery: thousands of flowers picked at night are needed to distill a minimum amount. Anyone passing here at dusk will smell nothing like it, but the sign keeps the name of a difficult and costly flower.