Spruce Resin

Note Profile

Botanical

About

Spruce resin is the pitch that bleeds from a wound in spruce bark and hardens in the air. It is not the needle oil sold as spruce.

Scent Profile

Amber_resinous is the note. Wikipedia gives the hardened trunk pitch exactly one descriptor, 'strongly aromatic and resinous', and there is nothing else in the evidence to divide the weight with. Dry_woody is the balsamic-into-woody body that every conifer resin shows on drydown, and it is set above published fir-resin (0.30) because CA Perfume's own fir page places spruce as the denser and more turpentine-forward of the two. Green is the facet I have deliberately cut. Published spruce and black-spruce both sit at green, and both are needle materials. Trunk pitch is not needles and no source reports a green needle facet in it, so is what remains of the general conifer character rather than a crushed-needle claim. Cooling_mentholic is the turpenic, camphoraceous monoterpene fraction, again set above fir resin (0.20) on the same 'less turpenic than spruce' comparison. Under the line, sweet_vanillic and honeyed are the balsamic sweetness reported for spruce materials generally, fresh_spice and earthy are small, and smoky is a trace for a resin that is burned as well as chewed.

ScentWheel

Breadthmedium

EnvelopeBase · ~12h lasting

Family Amber · Musk · Leather, Woody & Earthy

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

Origin

Spruce resin is a trunk exudate. Resin flows out of damaged bark and hardens on contact with air into brittle deposits stuck to the trunk (Wikipedia, Spruce gum). Indigenous women in North America used it to caulk the seams of birch-bark canoes. In the nineteenth century woodsmen called gummers collected it and sold it to the first chewing gum makers, which is why it is better known as spruce gum than as a perfumery material. Wikipedia describes its flavour as strongly aromatic and resinous. No supplier I could find sells a product labelled spruce resin or spruce resinoid. Every traded spruce material is made from needles and twigs: Eden Botanicals gives the plant part for its Black Spruce Absolute as 'needles', and Hermitage Oils steam-distils twigs and needles for its Silver Spruce oil.

Usage in Perfumery

Spruce resin appears in 5 Parfumo perfumes across 3 brands and no Fragrantica ones. It is used as a forest-floor base material rather than a fresh conifer top. Where spruce and black spruce brighten an opening, spruce resin holds a balsamic weight underneath, and it does the same work as fir balsam, elemi or a soft frankincense in a woody or incense accord. It pairs with cedar, oud, labdanum and vetiver.