Cherry blossom (sakura) is one of the most popular notes in perfume, shower gel and scented candles across Asia. But anyone who has stood under a row of Japanese cherries in bloom knows something: most of those flowers have almost no smell. The “sakura” smell people know is a constructed one, and an important part of it comes not from the flower but from the leaf.
Beautiful flowers, very faint smell
Most ornamental cherry cultivars in Japan were selected for colour, form and the fullness of their petals, not for scent. Their smell is so faint you have to press your nose into the cluster to catch it. A few cultivars have been selected for a clearer fragrance, but they are not the trees that fill the parks.
In Vietnam there is a further source of confusion: the mai anh đào of Da Lat is Prunus cerasoides, a different species from the Japanese cherries, flowering in the dry season.
Because the flowers give so little scent and the petals are so delicate, no cherry blossom essential oil or absolute is produced commercially in the way jasmine or rose are extracted.
The sakura smell is in the leaf
In Japan, the smell most associated with the word sakura is that of sakuramochi: a rice cake filled with red bean paste and wrapped in a salted cherry leaf. The leaves used are mainly those of the Oshima cherry. When the leaves are salted, an aromatic compound forms in them: coumarin, with a sweet smell of hay and faint vanilla.
Fresh leaves hardly have that smell. The coumarin in the leaf is bound to a sugar and does not evaporate. When the leaf is salted and its cells break, the leaf’s own enzymes cut that bond and release the coumarin. It is the same mechanism that makes wilting grass smell sweet when fresh grass does not, described in the article on tobacco notes.
So when a Japanese speaker says a food has a “sakura smell”, they are mostly talking about the coumarin of salted leaves, not the scent of the flower.
What a sakura accord is built from
| Piece of the smell | Materials often used |
|---|---|
| Sweet, hay, salted leaf | Coumarin |
| Almond, powder | Heliotropin, benzaldehyde |
| Soft rose | Phenylethyl alcohol and light floral materials |
| Clear, clean, lasting | Synthetic musks |
Benzaldehyde needs a word of its own, because it causes the biggest confusion. It is the smell of bitter almond and cherry stones, and also the “cherry” of Western sweets and soft drinks. That smell belongs to the fruit, or more exactly the stone, not to the flower. A product labelled “cherry blossom” that smells like cherry sweets is using a lot of benzaldehyde.
Heliotropin gives a powdery, almond-like note, a little like baby powder. It makes the sakura accord soft and gives it a “pale pink” feel.
There is no standard sakura formula. Each manufacturer balances these pieces in its own way: some versions are sweet and powdery, some green and clear like leaves, some close to sweets.
Telling them apart yourself
If you can, set three things side by side:
- A bottle of almond extract for baking. This is almost pure benzaldehyde, the “cherry” note.
- A scraped tonka bean or a salted cherry leaf. This is coumarin, the Japanese “sakura” note.
- A cherry blossom product you have at home.
Most people find the third leans towards one of the other two. That tells you which way it was built.
Coumarin is on the EU list of fragrance allergens and must be named on the label above the threshold set in the regulation. If a sakura product lists coumarin, that is a sign it follows the salted-leaf direction.
The article on perfume note names places cherry blossom among the notes whose plant is real but will not give up its smell, together with lily of the valley and orchid.
Sources
- Government of Japan, Highlighting Japan (April 2021). Chomeiji Sakuramochi. gov-online.go.jp
- Ohloff G., Pickenhagen W., Kraft P. (2012). Scent and Chemistry: The Molecular World of Odors. Verlag Helvetica Chimica Acta, Wiley-VCH.
- Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 on cosmetic products, Annex III: coumarin among the allergens that must be labelled above the threshold.