Woody & Earthy

Earthy

Soil, root, mushroom, the smell after rain

earthy 131 notes 347 materials 7 anchors

What it smells like

Patchouli, vetiver root, geosmin. Geosmin is detectable by the human nose at a few parts per trillion. That is why wet earth is one of the most instantly recognisable smells there is.

Where it stops

Earthy is the soil. Mossy is what grows on the north face of the tree above it. They are neighbours and are constantly confused.

Smells most like

soil tincture - and in the same register, geosmin, beetroot.

Notes that load on it

Notes from our catalogue whose position on this facet is 0.40 or higher, strongest first. A note is not filed under one facet: it carries a value on all 34 at once, and these are the ones where this axis is doing real work.

Materials that carry it

Real substances, each keyed by its CAS registry number, that an external perfumery vocabulary publishes with a term meaning this facet outright. This is the layer that makes a facet checkable against something outside our own database.

Materials carrying this facet, with registry number, source terms and regulatory status
Material CAS Terms Status
difurfuryl sulfide CAS 13678-67-6 earthy, fungal, mushroom
benzaldehyde dimethyl acetal CAS 1125-88-8 earthy, fungal, rooty
1-octen-3-ol CAS 3391-86-4 earthy, fungal, mushroom
2-ethylfenchol CAS 18368-91-7 earthy, patchouli, rooty
(3r)-oct-1-en-3-ol CAS 3687-48-7 earthy, fungal, mushroom
6-isobutylquinoline CAS 68198-80-1 earthy, rooty, vetiver
2-tert-butyl-4-methylcyclohexan-1-ol CAS 67634-11-1 earthy, patchouli, vetiver
1-(3,3-dimethyl-2-bicyclo[2.2.1]heptanyl)ethanol CAS 66062-78-0 earthy, patchouli, vetiver
2,2,7,7-tetramethyl-1-prop-2-enylcycloheptan-1-ol CAS 105463-44-3 earthy, patchouli, rooty
(e)-5-methyl-1-(2,6,6-trimethylcyclohex-2-en-1-yl)hex-1-en-3-one CAS 99948-88-6 earthy, rooty, vetiver
pinacol CAS 76-09-5 earthy, patchouli
octyl acetate CAS 112-14-1 earthy, mushroom
benzyl tiglate CAS 37526-88-8 earthy, mushroom
dibenzyl ether CAS 103-50-4 earthy, mushroom IFRA
isolongifolone CAS 23787-90-8 earthy, patchouli
tiglyl tiglate CAS 72845-40-0 fungal, mushroom
patchoulialcohol CAS 5986-55-0 earthy, patchouli
vetiveryl acetate CAS 62563-80-8 rooty, vetiver IFRA
octyl phenylacetate CAS 122-45-2 earthy, rooty
phenylacetaldehyde dimethyl acetal CAS 101-48-4 earthy, mushroom
3-octanol CAS 589-98-0 earthy, mushroom
1-decen-3-ol CAS 51100-54-0 fungal, mushroom
1-nonen-3-ol CAS 21964-44-3 earthy, mushroom
1-hepten-3-ol CAS 4938-52-7 earthy, mushroom
1-octen-3-one CAS 4312-99-6 earthy, mushroom
2-octen-4-one CAS 4643-27-0 earthy, mushroom IFRA
2-tridecanone CAS 593-08-8 earthy, mushroom
jasmone, (e)- CAS 6261-18-3 fungal, mushroom
oct-3-en-2-one CAS 1669-44-9 earthy, mushroom IFRA
octyl 2-furoate CAS 39251-88-2 earthy, mushroom

Showing 30 of 347. The full set ships with the published standard rather than being paginated here.

Reading the two flags

Declarable means the substance appears in Annex III of the EU Cosmetics Regulation, so it has to be named on the ingredient list once it passes a concentration threshold. IFRA means an IFRA Standard restricts or prohibits its use. Both are facts about the substance, not about any fragrance: a perfume can contain a declarable material below the threshold and never print it, and a restricted material used within its limit is used correctly.

The source also supplies no common name for a large share of materials, so those display as a bare registry number and are ranked last. They are kept because they are real evidence: dropping them would make the vocabulary look better described than it is.

Anchor terms

A facet on its own is just a word we chose. An anchor is what makes it checkable: a term in an external, independently maintained vocabulary of odour descriptions, built for perfumery materials rather than for us. The material list above is drawn from the direct terms only, because a partial term corroborates too weakly to stand as evidence on its own.

Direct Terms that mean this facet outright
  • earthy
  • fungal
  • mushroom
  • musty, earthy, moldy
  • patchouli
  • rooty
  • vetiver
Partial Terms that lean this way but also load elsewhere
  • musty

The rest of Woody & Earthy

The other facets in this family. A note can load on any of them at the same time as this one, so they are neighbours rather than alternatives.

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