Reference point
A rotting log in the garden, broken open and smelled at the softened inside.
Do this before you read on. An entry only works when you have just smelled the thing.
Damp, sweetly rotten, with a mushroom note and a layer of earth. Heavy, dense, and clings to the hand.
This is the end of a tree trunk’s life cycle, and it sits on the border between the woody-resinous family and the earthy family. Rotting wood holds both what is left of the wood and all the traces of the fungi and bacteria breaking it down.
Compared with rotting leaves, rotting wood is sweeter and less green, because lignin breaks down into different compounds from the cellulose in leaves.
How to smell it
Find a log that has rotted in a garden or a damp forest. Break it open and smell the soft, crumbly core. Compare it with rotting leaves taken from the same place.
Why this one is hard
Because it is easily lumped in with the general smell of the forest. You have to break it open and smell the core on its own.
Don’t confuse with
This entry
Rotting wood
Woody & Resinous family
Rotting wood is sweeter and less green, because lignin breaks down into different compounds from the cellulose in leaves.
Scientific note
Rotting wood is the product of fungi breaking down lignin — the toughest component of wood and one of the hardest materials to decompose in nature. Only certain groups of fungi can do it. The process releases phenolic fragments, the same group of compounds found in wood smoke, so rotting wood and wood smoke are chemical relatives although one comes from fire and the other from time.
In Vietnamese life
In mushroom growing, rotting wood is the substrate, and its smell tells whether a log is ready to be inoculated. Experienced growers judge by nose before they judge by eye.