Bird Cherry

Note Profile

Botanical

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

Nutty leads and it is the only thing all three sources agree on: 'almond-scented blossom' (Woodland Trust), 'a strong almond scent' (GraftinGardeners). Norranorrland's odd descriptor 'hydrocyanic acid' is read here as the same bitter-almond benzaldehyde edge said sharply, not as a claim about prussic acid. White_floral is the flower itself, described as 'heavily scented, white with five petals' rather than faint. Floral and honeyed come from Norranorrland's 'fruity, floral honey core scent', which is the only source describing the extracted material rather than the tree in a garden. Fruity is from the same phrase and reads as blossom fruitiness, not cherry flesh. No source describes the fruit at all. Under those, small powdery and sweet_vanillic carry the softness a heavy white raceme has, and a small aquatic_ozonic stands for Norranorrland's 'sweet rain'. Green is low and deliberately not zero, because a spring blossom on a leafing tree is unlikely to have none and no source ruled it out either way. The bark's acrid odour is excluded. It is a different plant part.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeHeart · ~4h lasting

Family Sweet & Gourmand, Floral

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

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.