I could never have predicted that Autumn in the Air would become the realm of Starbucks' Spiced Pumpkin Lattes. Would you have guessed this? What does Autumn bring to the air? The smell of leaves, trees, and plants dying and rotting. It is that slightly sharp, sweet smell. Unless you are under a Katsura tree and it is a strong sugary, sweet vanilla smell.
One article quotes an expert saying that the smell of leaves decaying is "a bit like chlorine or the exhaust of a dryer vent." That's distinctive - we can give it a test in the next few weeks.
What the cooler temperatures bring is a sense of "fresher" to us. It makes the scent of decay stand out more clearly. That's the specific and special smell of Fall. That's it.
There is much research on scent - it is a large component of the beauty industry. But not here on the internet, where breezy, short, not much information "articles" hold the day. Or autumn air fresheners tell you they are out of stock. But persistence has led to an interesting person in the field of scent.
Norwegian artist, chemist and smell scientist Sissel Tolaas was commissioned by the US’s Smithsonian Design Museum in 2016 to create a smell inspired by New York’s Central Park. So she did. She has her own archive of smells. Fascinated by humans’ complicated and often highly emotional relationship with the world of smell, she has even devised a “nose language” or “vocabulary of olfaction” that she calls Nasalo. It is based on an archive of more than 7,000 smells and 2,500 scent molecules that Tolaas has collected over the last 20 years. Housed in a lab in the artist’s Berlin studio, these are kept in hermetically sealed glass jars and aluminium boxes. Examples include everything from the smell of concrete and dusty brick to old graveyards, money and wet football. Here's an article about her HERE. And another more in-depth article HERE.
Wouldn't that be amazing to be able to experience all of these and distinguish them - the way we do taste. Smell has been left to chance for us.
Here are some big-leaf Magnolia leaves. These came from Longwood a number of years ago. I will have to check out their smell this year - there's a garden nearby with a tree.
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