Arbutus Wood

Note Profile

Botanical

About

Arbutus wood is the timber of the strawberry tree, and nobody has written down what it smells like. Four sources were checked. Two describe the wood only by what it is used for, turning, Greek flutes, pipes, firewood and charcoal. One, The Wood Database, gives an odour line for the closest relative in the genus and it reads: no characteristic odour. So the vector says the one thing the evidence supports, a faint dry wood, and says nothing else. The honeyed smell on record for this plant belongs to its flowers, not to its timber, and it is not scored here.

Scent Profile

Dry_woody is the only facet scored and it is deliberately low. Two things put it there and nothing puts it higher. The referent is timber, and Parfumo places the note in the base. Against that, the only odour datum found anywhere in the genus is The Wood Database's line on Pacific madrone: no characteristic odour. A faint wood is what those two facts together describe. Every other facet is zero because no source names one, not because anyone reported an absence, and the spreads carry that: they are wide across sweet_vanillic, honeyed, green, smoky, earthy, creamy_woody and powdery, which are the directions this could plausibly run once somebody actually smells a plank. Honeyed is the specific trap. Plants For A Future and Wikipedia both record a soft honey or mild sweet scent for Arbutus unedo, and both attach it to the flowers. Borrowing it here would import a floral smell into a note whose name says wood and whose placements are all base, so it stays at zero with a 0.12 spread instead.

ScentWheel

Breadthmedium

EnvelopeBase · ~12h lasting

Origin

The wood of Arbutus unedo, the Mediterranean strawberry tree. Parfumo's German mirror names the note Erdbeerbaumholz, strawberry-tree wood, and both attested uses come from Acqua dell'Elba, a brand on an island where A. unedo grows wild on the shoreline. That ties the referent to A. unedo rather than to the North American A. menziesii behind the published arbutus-madrona-bearberry-tree note. The tree does not usually grow straight, so the timber is used for small turned work and charcoal, not for construction. No supplier selling an arbutus wood oil, absolute or extract was found.

Usage in Perfumery

Attested 3 times on Parfumo across 2 brands and absent from Fragrantica. Parfumo says it usually sits in the base. Two brands is enough attestation to clear the bar that rejected arbutus-berry and arbutus-blossom, both of which had one brand each and no odour prose. What this note has not got is any description of its smell, so treat it as a term perfumers print rather than a material with a documented profile.