Reference point
Burn a pile of dry leaves in the garden and stand downwind.
Do this before you read on. An entry only works when you have just smelled the thing.
Smoky, sweet, with a honeyed note and a bitter layer at the end. It differs from straw smoke in being denser and woodier.
This is a smell tied to late afternoons and clearing the garden. It clings to hair and clothes for a very long time, longer than most other smoke.
The honey note here does not come from added sugar but from the dry leaves themselves burning at a low temperature.
How to smell it
Stand downwind five metres away, where the smoke has thinned and separated into layers. Smell. Then go home and smell your clothes an hour later — what remains is the heaviest part, quite different from the first impression.
Why this one is hard
Because smoke stings the eyes and people tend to back away. Smelling it properly means choosing your distance, not enduring it.
Don’t confuse with
This entry
Burning dry leaves
Earthy family
Dry leaves contain more lignin than straw, so their smoke is denser and sweeter, with a stronger honey note.
Scientific note
Dry leaves contain both cellulose and lignin, and burning them at low temperature gives a mixture of furfural from the cellulose and guaiacol from the lignin. The honey note most likely comes from pyrolysis products of cellulose and residual sugars in the leaves, in the same family as furfural; we have not found an analysis naming that compound for leaves in general. Fresh leaves burn quite differently, because water lowers the temperature and produces much more white smoke.
In Vietnamese life
Burning leaves is a common way of clearing gardens in the countryside and suburbs. In many places it is restricted because of air pollution, and this smell is gradually becoming a smell of memory rather than of the present.