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Why Does Freshly Cut Grass Smell So Nice? 为什么新割的草那么好闻 If you grew up in the suburbs, you recognize it immediately: the sweet, sharp smell of someone mowing a lawn or ballfield. As it wafts into your nostrils, it somehow manages to smell exactly like the color green. But what are we really smelling when we inhale that fresh-cut grass scent? And why do we like it so much? 如果你是在郊区长大的，你立刻就能闻出这个味道——刚修剪完草坪或棒球场后甜美、浓烈的气味。当它飘进你的鼻孔时，它的味道不知为何如绿色般清新。不过，当我们吸入新割的草的气味时，我们真正闻到的是什么呢？为什么我们这么喜欢这个味道？ Chemically speaking, that classic lawn smell is an airborne mix of carbon-based compounds called green leaf volatiles, or GLVs. Plants often release these molecules when damaged by insects, infections or mechanical forces — like a lawn mower. 从化学角度来讲，这种典型的草坪气味来源于空气中混合的碳基化合物，称为绿叶挥发物（简称GLVs）。植物在受到昆虫、传染病的入侵或机械外力如割草机的破坏时，会释放这些分子。 Plants manufacture slightly different forms of GLVs depending on what's happening to them, said Ian Baldwin, a plant ecologist and founding director of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany. In a 2010 study published in the journal Science, he and colleague Silke Allmann, of the University of Amsterdam, found that tobacco leaves punctured and rubbed with insect saliva released a different bouquet of volatile compounds than leaves that had been poked and brushed with water. | 
