Bird Cherry

Note Profile

Botanical

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About

Bird cherry is the blossom of Prunus padus, a European tree that hangs its white flowers in long drooping racemes. The note is almond first. Behind the almond sits a honeyed floral core with a little fruit in it. It is not sakura and it is not the tree's bark, which smells acrid.

Scent Profile

Bird Cherry smells first of almond, a bitter edge rather than a sweet one. Behind it sits a heavily scented white flower, honeyed at the centre with a soft floral fruitiness that is closer to blossom than to actual cherries. A faint powdery softness and a touch of rain-like freshness sit underneath, with the barest thread of green from the leafing tree. It is not the tree's bark, which smells acrid rather than sweet.

ScentWheel

Breadthmedium

EnvelopeHeart · ~4h lasting

Family Sweet & Gourmand, Floral

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

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Materials That Can Make This Note

Perfumers can build Bird Cherry from materials such as:

Benzaldehyde almond · cherry · cinnamon

Smell words come from published sources.

Allergens perfumes with this note can list: Bitter almond

A given perfume with this note may use some of these, or something else, and may or may not contain the allergens above.

Origin

Prunus padus grows across northern Europe and northern Asia. The flowers are white, five-petalled and carried in racemes, and every source that describes them leads with almond. The Woodland Trust calls it 'almond-scented blossom'. GraftinGardeners says the flowers 'have a strong almond scent'. That reading is chemically plausible, because Prunus flowers carry benzaldehyde precursors. One Swedish house, Norranorrland, sells an extract of the flower and describes it as 'a scent very close to the flower'. No absolute or GC-MS analysis from a major house was found, so this note rests on trade and community description rather than analysis.

Usage in Perfumery

A spring blossom note used where a cherry flower is wanted with weight rather than transparency. The almond facet lets it sit against heliotrope, tonka and marzipan accords as easily as against other white flowers. Six Fragrantica listings use it, all in floral compositions. Use the tree's bark reading for something else. It is acrid and belongs to a different material.