Scented Paths: The smell of Texas Mimosa or Silk Tree, genus Albizia Julibrissin

I walk my dog every day along a suburban path built around a creek that holds an amazing amount of wildlife, considering that it is surrounded by houses. On my latest walk I came across these beautifully scented trees that were so common in my childhood but rarely seen today, what we call a Mimosa. One of my early memories is climbing our mimosa tree and in the early warm months of summer being enclosed in this temple of scent, a powerfully sweet smell emitting from its fanciful pink puffs. In Texas and the Southern US these are called mimosa trees, so when I first starting becoming more interested in perfumes and heard about the mimosa scent and the spring blooming of mimosas in France, I was so confused and shocked to see pictures of trees covered in yellow blossoms. Had my parents been calling this by the wrong name my whole childhood? To confirm this confusion, in 2014 Jo Malone came out with a cologne called Silk Blossom, and the photos showed the beloved pink puffs that I called Mimosa. I was convinced that I had been mislead all my life, sort of like how many years ago I taught a troop of Girl Scouts I was leading on a campout that the howling we were hearing in the dark distance was coming from gentle prairie dogs, which I described as being something like a dingo. In reality it was probably coyotes, as I found out a couple of years later that prairie dogs were mole like creatures that neither howled or resembled a dog. Thus do false narratives get spread. Anyway, I thought this was the case with the mimosa, aka, silk blossom tree.

Then when I did some digging I found out that where I live the tree is actually called Mimosa, even though this is a bit of a misnomer. It is also sometimes referred to as a Persian Silk Tree. When I was young they dotted our suburban neighborhood but it is now considered an invasive species and not sold in plant nurseries. As they aren't particularly long lived, they are mostly seen in more wild outdoor settings.  Then yesterday when I was delivering Meals On Wheels, I saw a Mimosa in the yard of one of the clients, a remnant from the past in this aging neighborhood.

The smell is lovely but so hard to describe. To further confuse things, I plucked a blossom from one tree which smelled totally different from a blossom that came from a tree much further down the path. If you've never smelled one, I'll try:

What a mimosa/silk tree blossom smells like:
-- Slightly sweet, but not as sweet as orange blossom
-- Slightly floral, but not as indolic or green as jasmine
-- Slightly fruity, maybe apricot or peachy, but this is faint
-- Blossoms from one of the trees had a strong scent of the white juicy rind that remains, after you've eaten away the watermelon
-- It's a delicate scent, hard to pin down

What a mimosa/silk tree blossom does NOT smell like:
Jo Malone Silk Blossom, introduced in 2014 and reintroduced this year.

I have always loved these fanciful pink puffs, so fuzzy and delicate. They remind me of the hair on the old Dr. Seuss characters, Thing 1 and Thing 2.

To me the blossoms smell like if fairies had a winery and made pink, slightly sweet effervescent brew. It is one of those ephemeral scents that is hard to pin down and probably even harder to replicate in a perfume. You can hold a gardenia or orange blossom and smell, and the scent is strong and ever present, unchanging. These delicate blossoms will give you a beautiful whiff of scent, then the next minute you can't smell anything no matter how hard you inhale. Then it's back again. Like I said, ephemeral.

Has anyone tried Max Mara Silk Touch which was released in 2007. It is supposed to have the scent of silk flower but I've never smelled it. Please let me know if you are aware of a perfume that more truthfully replicates this scent.

Photos of mimosa tree my own. Dr. Seuss is Google image.

Sniffing Out My New Surroundings

After living in Singapore the past fourteen years, my husband and I finally packed up and moved our belongings to Adelaide, Australia, which is his hometown but a place he hasn't lived in more than thirty years. It has been interesting setting up house in a city I've only visited in the past. I don't know if you fellow scent lovers are like me but when I get to a new place my nose is busy recording impressions. I've always thought the blogger, The Scented Hound, has the best named blog because I do feel sometimes feel like my dog, sniffing the air for new scent sensations.

Many years ago when I first came to Adelaide I remember stepping out of the airplane and being so taken with the scent of eucalyptus in the air. If you're a Californian I guess you would recognize the scent but for me it was an unknown. I've only seen one rain since I've been here, actually just a sprinkle, but when the water hits the eucalyptus leaves....heaven! Adelaide is known for the beautiful parklands which totally surround the city, and it is considered the rose capital of Australia and one of the best places in the world to grow roses.

I have been walking around my neighborhood, getting in my 10,000 steps, and trying to find my bearing here. My favorite time to walk is around six o'clock in the evening when the sun in waning and the air gets cooler, because that's when the flowers really start to release their scent. Front yards are fenced here, unlike my home in Texas , but in my neighborhood many have turned their front yards into beautiful cottage gardens. It is a short walk down the street to the grocery, the pub, or the bus stop and it's a fragrant journey all the way.

I walk past fragrant white roses, which smell delicate and pure. I of course stop and sniff all the roses that I pass and I can testify that the white ones really do have a different scent from the more colorful roses. I also walk past this beautiful stephanotis vine, the flowers smelling of a cross between gardenia and jasmine.

Some houses display their beautiful gardens.

 While others you can only peek through the gate.

My house has a beautiful old wisteria vine but unfortunately I just missed the blooming season. And don't forget the beaches. These are not the tropical smells I associate with the beaches of Asia which I have visited from Singapore. These beach smells are more akin to the northern coasts of the United States, east or west. The water here travels up from Antarctica and it takes most of the summer to warm it.

I look forward to exploring all the new sights and smells. Have a happy weekend, wherever you are!

Arquiste Ella & El and the Cannonball Flower

One of the best things about living in Singapore has been my almost daily walk through Singapore's Botanic Gardens. Other than the Tembusu tree which I wrote about here, my favorite flower is on the Cannonball tree. These flowers look almost prehistoric and are large enough to cradle in the palm of your hand. Their petals are thick and waxy but the mechanism that holds them together on the tree disappears once they leave the tree's lifeblood. They fall apart into pieces in your hand. The interior of the flower looks like what I would expect a Venus Flytrap to look like and evidently it is a favorite with bees. The scent is not as strong as the appearance of the flower would indicate. It's a not-quite-jasmine, not-quite-magnolia scent touched with a tiny drop of lemon, actually fairly delicate compared to many flowers in the gardens. I had always thought Singapore Botanic society should make a perfume from this so when last year Carlos Huber of Arquiste Perfumeur introduced El and Ella, the latter which features a note from the Cannonball tree, I was ecstatic. Everyone else was featuring blog posts about Studio 59 and the crazy disco days but I was just thinking, Cannonball Flower, yes!

Cannonballs from the Cannonball tree, Singapore Botanic Gardens.

The thing is, though, that Ella really is all about the madcap 70's when perfumes were big, fashion and hairstyles made a statement, and the frolics of celebrities in fancy NYC bars was considered a bit shocking. Little did we know it was really the age of innocence compared to today. When I first put Ella on my wrist I flashed back to my twenties, which was quite a few years ago! I used to wear a Ralph Lauren perfume called Tuxedo. It was one of those magic perfumes that not many people were aware of but whenever I wore Tuxedo it always drew attention. If I had known how short its life would be I would have bought every bottle I could find but one day it just quietly disappeared. I really can't remember exactly how it smelled but when I applied Ella it triggered something deep within my memory that brought me back to that time in life, when I was young and men flirted, I bloomed with youth, and the possibilities before me seemed endless. Looking at the two perfumes, Tuxedo and Ella, I can see that their notes are totally different and there is no way they could have smelled alike, but I believe that Ella perfectly captures that era, and that's why I had to have a bottle the minute I tried it.

I usually try to describe a perfume's notes but El and Ella really do harken back to that 70's era when perfumes were a glorious blend and the individual notes were not meant to take precedence. Perfumer Rodrigo Flores-Roux took an inspiration from Carlos Huber's tribute to the memory of the glamour of Acapulco, Mexico in 1978, and specifically Armando's Le Club which was a hangout for the glitzy and glamorous. Mr. Huber is an architect by training but in truth a Renaissance man who is interested in multiple fields. He has combined his love of history and architecture to pick moments in time for scented inspiration. El and Ella are his foray into recent history and he has captured the moment as perfectly as if he lived it. My only slight complaint is that I love Ella so much that I wish it displayed the force field strength tendencies of perfumes of that era. It is a scent to be noticed but is treated to a lighter touch.

I can tell you the note list of Ella: The flower from the Cannonball tree, angelica root, rose, carrot seed essence, jasmine, honey, ambergris, cardomom, patchouli, civet, vetiver, cigarette smoke accord and chypre accord. What I can't give is a play by play of how these notes unfold. As I stated above, it's a fragrant story describing what I personally consider one of the best perfume eras of our time. Even with all the perfumes being released today, chypres make up only a small portion of this output, maybe because so many of the ingredients are unattainable today. If you like chypres I would definitely try Ella.

El is the masculine partner to Ella and though more familiar to today's perfumes, it also radiates a bit of vintage vibe. It is an anamalic fougere and opens with the classic and old fashioned notes of laurel, clary sage, rosemary, and Egyptian geranium. I can also smell the orange water in the opening and these notes combine to smell to me like a man who has lathered in very posh and richly scented Italian soap while showering in preparation for his evening out. Eventually notes of patchouli, oak moss and vetiver bring on the deeper darker notes present in fougeres. What makes this feel a bit vintage is the addition of honey, civet, and castoreum. They provide just the slightest thread of funk to this overwise traditional style of men's scent. In keeping with the 1970's Acapulco disco inspiration, I picture a tanned, well groomed man, shirt unbuttoned one button to many to be proper, a gold chain is perhaps around his neck. He starts the evening out smelling richly fragrant but as the hours pass, he dances, he sweats, his own natural pheromones began to integrate with the scent and it becomes something altogether more provacative. The scent never tips all the way over to a strong animalic on my skin and continues to waft the refined air of herbs and orange water.

In writing my review on Ella I was excited to explore the connection to the cannonball flower. If you would like to read a great review which delves deeply into the whole Acapulco disco connection, I highly recommend this review by The Silver Fox at A Scent of Elegance.

Photos my own. Scent purchased by me at www.TwistedLilly.com.

Tembusu, Singapore's Fragrant Tree

Every May something magical happens in Singapore. A tree blooms throughout the city and its tiny blossoms release a scent of uncommon beauty which is then captured by the breeze and wafted through the streets of Singapore.  The fragrance is elusive and only appears after dusk.  Imagine walking down a street when suddenly you are enveloped in a cloud of the sweetest most fragrant air you have ever breathed. You turn in a circle to see where the scent is coming from but there are no flowering trees or bushes of any kind in sight. The scent is carried in gentle waves by the breeze, first beguiling you, then just as suddenly disappearing and leaving you searching for the source. It is May, and in Singapore that means the Tembusu tree is in bloom.

The first time I smelled the Tembusu I was walking through Singapore's Botanic Garden some seven years ago or so.  My ipod was humming, I was trucking along among all the other wanderers and runners when suddenly I was overcome by the most gorgeous smell. It was early evening and I am accustomed to how the jasmines and ylang ylang smell stronger as the sun departs the sky. This was something altogether different, though, such a strangely beautiful smell that I began to look all around to see from where the scent was emanating. Not seeing anything flowering in my vicinity I began to follow my nose, scurrying here and there all around the garden paths, feeling very much like the human version of my dog when she is following a scent trail. I walked a good five minutes, the scent surging then waning, and finally came upon a tree I had not noticed before. It had clusters of tiny pale yellow flowers on its branches, but it wasn't the most prepossessing tree. I had walked by it numerous times without ever noticing it, but now my nose led me here to the source of this beautiful scent.

How to describe the scent? It is somewhat like jasmine, but without any indolic tendencies. There is a little sweet lemon freshness mixed with the floral jasmine smell. Some people say they can smell a touch of vanilla but I have not. It is like the freshest, sweetest jasmine you've ever smelt and it's scent is euphoric. Ok, maybe not for everyone; that's just me. But if you're a fragrance lover I suspect you'd be swooning too!

A couple of years ago I had been visiting with some girlfriends. It was getting late and I said my goodbyes, the first to depart. When I stepped outside I walked into a gossamer wall of fragrance; the air was redolent with the lush smell of Tembusu blossoms. I was practically overcome with olfactory joy, so much so that I immediately sent a text to my friends: "Step outside, QUICK. The air smells like PERFUME!!!" I waited for their enthusiastic replies. And waited. None came. I still don't get it. Life doesn't hand you a lot of luxuries for free but for goodness sakes, THE AIR IS PERFUMED! This doesn't happen every day! If you've ever seen the movie Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, there is a scene where everyone is rushing to the town square to find the source of the beautiful scent and then are overcome with ecstasy: I understand that feeling now.

Things of great beauty in the plant world are by their very nature fragile and unsubstantial. You can't say, "I'm going to go outside and smell the air tonight." It is not available on demand. It catches you unaware. The line from the song Maria in the movie The Sound of Music has a line: "How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?" That is how the ethereal beauty of scents on the breeze behave, enjoy the moment because it will be fleeting.  I live half a mile from the Botanic Gardens and thus, that far from the nearest Tembusu tree as best I can determine. But I still get whiffs of it's scent in the evening. This fragrant extravaganza only lasts for three weeks or so, then it's gone. Supposedly Tembusu blooms in May and October but I can't ever recall smelling the blooms in October. Some years are better than others in terms of the strength of the scent. When Singapore was a wild place a century ago, before it became a city of five million, I imagine there were numerous Tembusu trees whereas today there are only a few. How beautiful the month of May must have been with all the trees blooming! Maybe it took away some of the sting of being in a hot and humid mosquito ridden climate with no air conditioners yet invented.

This article was written for the Garden Bulletin by a R.E.Hoi on a study he did from 1928 to 1935 concerning the blooming habits of the Tembusu tree:

"The gregarious flowering of the Tembusu trees, which are so abundant, both wild and planted, in the neighbourhood of the town, is one of the most striking seasonal phenomena to be observed in Singapore. For a fortnight or more, some of the suburbs of the town are filled with their heavy fragrance, both day and night."

The Tembusu (fagraea fragrans) is  native  to Singapore and is only found in Southeast Asia. It is such an iconic part of Singapore's natural history that the image of a 200 year old Tembusu tree, still living in the Botanic Garden, graces the back of the Singapore five dollar bill.

The Tembusu's flower has not been captured in perfume, although recently the Botanic Garden came out with a room diffuser and spray called Tembusu, in commemoration of the Botanic Gardens being named a UNESCO world heritage site. I smelled it in passing but will have to give it a closer look.  Although there is not a scent match for this flower, I will review a perfume which is somewhat reminiscent of the smell in  tomorrow's post.

The photo at top of artwork by E. Lim at elimgs.wordpress.com. . Stamp photos from Google.