Reference point
Stand under a tree canopy as the rain begins and smell upwards.
Do this before you read on. An entry only works when you have just smelled the thing.
Green, wet, cold, with a note of crushed leaves and a little mineral. Quite different from rain on a concrete yard.
Rain hitting leaves breaks some of the surface cells, releasing the same group of compounds that crushing a leaf releases. So this smell is rain and cut grass added together, in dilute form.
It belongs to the top stage because green leaf volatiles are very light. It lasts only the first few minutes of the rain, then is overtaken by the smell of the earth.
How to smell it
Stand under a dense canopy just as the rain starts and smell in the first three minutes. Then step out into an open yard and smell again. Two places, two smells, one shower.
Why this one is hard
Because it is completely overtaken by the smell of first rain if you stand in the wrong place. You have to be under the canopy and within the first few minutes.
Don’t confuse with
This entry
Rain on foliage
Earthy family
The same shower, two places. Under the leaves it is green and wet; in an open yard it is earthy and mineral.
Scientific note
Rain falling on leaves differs from rain falling on soil in that it does not release geosmin. What you smell is mainly six-carbon green leaf volatiles, formed when the raindrops lightly damage the leaf surface. It is a form of injury signal on a very small scale.
In Vietnamese life
This is a smell tied to summer downpours in all three regions of the country.