Smoketree

Note Profile

Botanical

About

Smoketree is the essential oil of Cotinus coggygria, a Eurasian shrub. It does not smell of smoke. The name comes from the plant's fluffy pink seed plumes, which look like clouds of smoke on the bush. The oil itself is terpenic and citrus-led.

Scent Profile

Citrus leads on composition rather than on an odour word, because limonene is 39 to 47 per cent of the oil in the only analysis found, and limonene on its own is a citrus material. Green is the odour word the academic source actually uses, 'terpenic', plus (Z)-beta-ocimene at 16 to 26 per cent, which is a green leafy-herbaceous compound rather than a citrus one. The two are close together because the evidence for each is a different kind and neither clearly outranks the other. Tropical and fruity carry the one first-hand odour claim in the sources, Plants For A Future's 'mango-like smell'. That claim is chemically coherent, because ocimene is one of the compounds that gives mango its smell, but PFAF attributes it to 'one report' it does not name, so the spread on tropical, the widest in this vector. Aromatic_herbal is the rest of the ocimene and the alpha-terpineol. Below the naming line, dry_woody carries the alpha-pinene at 8 per cent, floral carries the terpineol, and small fresh_spice and cooling_mentholic facets carry the camphene that PFAF reports in the leaf.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeTop · ~2h lasting

Family Fresh & Citrus, Green & Aromatic

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

Origin

The oil is steam-distilled from the leaves and flowers at a yield of up to 0.20 per cent. A PubMed Central review of the species says the plant is 'utilized in producing an essential oil with terpenic odor for use in perfumery' and gives the composition: monoterpene hydrocarbons dominate at 87.4 and 93.1 per cent across two samples, led by limonene at 47.0 and 39.2 per cent, (Z)-beta-ocimene at 16.4 and 26.3 per cent, and alpha-pinene at about 8 per cent. A Bulgarian producer lists the same compounds and adds alpha-terpineol. Plants For A Future reports a volatile oil in the leaves containing pinene and camphene, and says one report calls the odour mango-like.

Usage in Perfumery

No source describes how this is dosed inside a finished perfume. What the chemistry allows is a top-note lift: an oil that is nine-tenths monoterpene hydrocarbons will flash off fast and will not hold a heart. Expect it used the way other leaf oils are used, for a green citrus opening, with the mango facet as the reason to reach for it over a lemon leaf. Fragrantica records it in three fragrances and files it under Flowers.