Ribes?

my mature alpine current flowers smell of clove ...

but i cant say i ever crushed a leaf ... oh if the snow will ever melt and my plants start to bud out ....

they do not seed themselves around.. in my z5 garden ... but boy do these suckers, sucker ...

ken

Definitely a Ribes.

Thanks, everyone for your comments--never could have identified this by myself.
I've checked my records and I did indeed sow 6 seeds of Ribes sanguineum from a GW trade in the autumn of 2012. Sure hope MY flowers are clove-scented!

Ribes sanguineum smells more like tom cats, I'm afraid. If you can bear to crush a leaf you should get a whiff of it, even on seedlings.

Yep. The clove scent comes from flowers of R. odoratum.

Floral!
Eureka moment--Cat urine--that's what I'm smelling!
Being raised in the Deep South I took offence when visitors from the North would complain about the smell of an ancient boxwood garden at plantation where I worked. Boxwood, (and soon Ribes sanguineum) remind me of the joy of sitting in the garden on a hot sunny day adrift in the pleasure and smells of home. I adore plants that anchor us to the places we love.

Black currants smell similar.

I agree with floral_uk. The yellow flowers on my grandmothers black currant bush had a wonderful clove-like fragrance. She called in cinnamon bush. I didn't know until years later what it actually was.

"Black currant" is used for both Ribes nigrum and R. odoratum. Fragrant yellow flowers would be R. odoratum.

Yes, nejacobs - I'm referring to Ribes nigrum, the one we grow widely for fruit here. That has the cat pee smell I described in the post higher up. Ihe flowers are greenish and insignificant and rank.