Having penetrative sex during your/your partner's period: classic or dud

It also calls to mind that horrible scene from Your Friends and Neighbors.

Those are the three main rules.

OTM.

FYI

There was a brief period of time where I thought I could live off of these things. I think I was twelve.

(Also, am I crazy or did somebody once post a GIF of a woman who had sashimi where her pubic hair should be to ILE?)

Definitely. I say this as someone who lives and works in one.

Abhorrent as it is to speak of such matters, I must corroborate your reader's recent observation about certain trees in Los Angeles that smell like semen in the fall. I have two of these funky-smelling (in the original sense of the word meaning "bitch dog in heat") trees in my backyard in Laurel Canyon. They are ugly, have grotesque hairy blossoms, and smell so bad that bees and flies both share the nectar. It is disconcerting for me and I'm glad I'm not the only one to notice it. --R.H., Los Angeles

PS: I have no idea what they're called.

Dear R.H.:

I can see it's going to be one of those weeks. Due to the press of business, I haven't had had a chance to go hunt down the sperm trees of Los Angeles myself. However, David Lofgren, a botanical information consultant at the Los Angeles State and County Arboretum, speculates that the plant in question is the carob tree, Ceratonia siliqua, source of the well-known chocolate substitute. The tree, which grows only in Mediterranean climates like LA's, typically is around 30 feet tall and has bluish green leaves that are rounded on the end. At blossom time it has many little flowers, which may give the appearance of hairiness. In the fall and winter it produces sweet, juicy pods that conceivably could produce the smell of semen when they rot. However, if one of Cecil's devoted readers will be so kind as to send him a sample of the offending tree's leaves, blossoms, pods, or whatever, we will get to the bottom of this matter once and for all.

THE SPERM TREES OF LOS ANGELES: THE SEARCH CONTINUES

Dear Cecil:

I am writing in regard to the identity of the "semen tree" discussed recently in your column. May I suggest that what the writer was talking about was the female ginkgo tree? In the fall it drops many small apricot-colored fruits. When the fruit ripens, it smells more like vomit than semen. Orientals (I lived in Japan for ten years) consider the nut within this fruit (the ginkgo nut) to be a delicacy. In the early morning old people put Baggies over their hands, push the smelly fruit away from the nut, drop the nuts into a bag, and take them home. They are washed and dried (during which they lose their smell), cracked open, and the nut meat boiled or baked. Ginkgo nuts are great, but the fruit is still disgusting. --Elyse A., Evanston, Illinois

Dear Elyse:

Considering I ran the original letter as an example of a question so stupid that nobody could possibly be interested in it, the sperm trees of LA have generated an extraordinary response. In addition to vomit, I have heard about trees that smell like, um, fecal matter. Another tree supposedly smells like a certain well-known female orifice. A recent graduate of Vassar College in lovely Poughkeepsie, New York, reports that while on campus she, too, noticed certain trees that smell like vomit. However, another former Vassar inmate--believe me, I check this stuff out--says the indicated trees are definitely not ginkgoes. Knowing the party-hearty predilections of college women these days, I'm not sure the smell is entirely botanical in origin. Similarly, Cecil's longtime buddy and spiritual adviser Uncle Pat suggests that the smell of the LA tree may be the result of the city's notorious deve community having its way with the local plant life. I have taken this under advisement. Gratz Beehler of Washington, D.C.--a fine fellow despite his dubious moniker--says there is a tall (50-60 feet) and spindly (six to ten inches in diameter) plant in Florida known as the "punk tree," which has "very spikelike flowers" (hence the name, presumably). It blooms in March and October, smells "like rotten stuff" (if not necessarily semenlike), and is known to grow in LA. Gratz promises to try to rustle up a sample so we can get a positive ID. Meanwhile, I am still waiting patiently for somebody to send me a specimen of sperm-tree foliage. C'mon, kids--there's a Nobel Prize in this somewhere.

MORE OPINIONS

Dear Cecil:

Regarding the "sperm trees" of Los Angeles, I've checked with several people, and they all agree. California privet (sorry, I don't know the scientific name) is your culprit. I've seen it in hedge and tree form. I've seen its hairy flowers bloom in spring and fall; however, it only smells for a few weeks in the spring. That's when swarm of bees are attracted to it. --C.H., Glendale, California

Dear Cecil:

. . . carob trees. Said trees abound, for example, in the Los Feliz area north of Franklin near Edgemont. The trees smell like sperm, or Clorox on some days, and have nothing to do with appearing or acting like sperm. --Frank W., Thousand Oaks, California

Dear Cecil:

. . . the carob tree. These trees emit this odor only in the fall when they show a hairlike pollen-tipped fuzz growing from the bark near the tips of narrow branches. --Tom K., Los Angeles

Dear Cecil:

. . . the carob tree. We had a small one growing in our schoolyard in Arizona. One of the reasons it may be hard to identify is that it does not always smell. It seems to have a cycle, but not a yearly one. --M.N., Long Beach, California

Cecil replies:

The mail at this point is running about 2-to-1 carob tree, so I guess we'll declare it the winner. Unfortunately, the one sample of sperm tree blossom we received had been dumped into an ordinary envelope (rather than, say, a baggie), giving it time to dry out and disintegrate before we could get it to an expert for analysis. Let's use our heads out there, gang.

LATE NEWS ON THE SPERM TREES OF LOS ANGELES (01-Nov-1996)

Longtime readers will recall the heated debate in this space some years ago over the identity of a tree, originally spotted in Los Angeles, that at certain times of the year smelled like, uh, sperm. (To be precise, like semen. But you know what we mean.)

It wasn't our idea to get into this repulsive topic. It did, however, capture the imagination of the Teeming Millions. Not that the Teeming Millions were much help getting to the bottom of it. Despite repeated pleas, no one ever sent us an identifiable sample, and we never settled the matter.

The controversy flared anew on our America Online message board last summer. But this time our call for samples got results. In fact, we got two samples--one from Robert Williams, the other from Brian Maffitt.

Just one little problem. They weren't the same tree. What's more, neither of them was one of the trees suggested in our previous go-round on this subject.

I quote from a letter from the experts at the plant clinic at the Morton Arboretum near Chicago, to whom I sent the above-mentioned samples.

The two specimens you sent us arrived in, well, somewhat poor shape. [Hey, so I delayed a little sending them out. I'm a busy guy.]

Although you mentioned semen as the putative odor given off by the trees, and one of the specimens had degraded to what looked like a baggie full of the bodily fluid, we found the odor much more offensive than an innocent penis could possibly produce.

However, one brave soul examined the samples long enough to determine their identity.

The Williams sample is a chestnut (Castanea sp.), known to produce flowers with an offensive odor (offensive to humans but revered by pollinating insects). It is likely a Chinese chestnut or hybrid chestnut since our American chestnut was pretty much wiped out by a fungal disease introduced to the U.S. around 1906, and there are very few American chestnuts that reach flowering age.

The Maffitt sample is undoubtedly a tree of heaven (Ailanthus altissima), although, in honesty, we lacked the courage to pull a leaf out of the 'semen-filled' bag. Tree of heaven is said to stink to high heaven as its flowers produce a decidedly disagreeable stench.

Interestingly, it is the male flowers that produce the stench, while the female flowers are aroma-free (there are separate male and female trees for this species). So perhaps the connection your reader made with male-produced semen is not too far off.

Very good, except that previously the consensus was that the sperm tree was the carob tree, with one radical holding out for the California privet. Now we've got three or four possible sperm trees out there.

So there you have it. The truth ain't pretty. But I feel you need to know.

Dude, cock smells like cock. Don't try to quantify it. It's too special.

Bacon?!? Now you're talking.

Why do I find this reassuring?