Bearberry

Note Profile

Botanical

About

Bearberry is a tart red berry note with forest floor underneath it. The one source that describes its smell calls it fresh and fruity with a bright tangy sweetness, sitting over a subtle earthiness, and separately calls the raw fruit dry and astringent. It is a minor note and it is rarely used.

Scent Profile

Fruity leads: bright, tangy, sun-ripened red berry, and it is the one thing every line of the source agrees on. Sour carries the tart half, and it is supported twice over - 'sweet and slightly tart, like fresh berries' from the perfumery description, and 'dry, astringent' from the same source's one-line summary of the raw fruit. Earthy is explicit and repeated: a forest-floor undertone that sits below the fruit and, the source says, stays there as the fruit sweetness moves. Sweet_vanillic is the mellowing the source reports after 24 hours on a blotter, when the profile turns softer and rounder. It is scored low and wide because that is the fruit's own sugar rather than any vanilla, and one blotter report is thin evidence. Below: green, dry_woody and mossy_chypre for the forest setting the earthiness implies without anyone naming it. The 'more medicinal than edible' remark has no facet in this vocabulary and is not scored.

ScentWheel

Breadthmedium

EnvelopeHeart · ~5h lasting

Family Fruity

Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.

Origin

The fruit of Arctostaphylos, a dwarf shrub of Arctic, subarctic and alpine ground, most often A. uva-ursi. The genus name is Greek for bear plus bunch of grapes. It is not the same plant as the published Arbutus (Madrona, Bearberry Tree) note, which is Arbutus menziesii, a tall evergreen tree of the North American Pacific coast that carries bearberry as one of several US common names. The two share an English name and nothing else. No commercial essential oil or absolute of Arctostaphylos berry was found. The extracts sold under this name are cosmetic leaf extracts, used for their skin effect rather than their odour.

Usage in Perfumery

Named as a heart note by the one trade source, added for fruitiness in both floral and woody compositions. Its own source concedes the note is less common than mainstream fruits. Fragrantica records 3 placements. Parfumo records none.