We answer a listener's question on why some flowers don't have scents. They imagine that a flower with no scent is an older flower, whose fragrance has evaporated. But that may not be the case. A flower with a fragrance is a flower with a mission.
Flowers emit fragrance for genetic reasons, specifically, to attract a pollinator.
Pollinators include insects, birds, bats, and other mammals. These creatures transfer pollen from one flower to another on the same plant, or to a flower of another plant of the same species. Flowers without a fragrance depend on self-pollination. In self-pollination, there's a transfer of pollen from the male stamen to the female stigma of the same flower. Any number of different creatures can serve as pollinators.