Smells of Summer : Tomato Leaf
Suzanna on tomato leaf as a perfume note.
Among the smells of summer (suntan lotion, beach rose, vanilla ice cream, jasmine, hot asphalt, and blackberries, to name a few), none is more redolent to me of that golden season than is the scent of tomato leaves. The leaf’s smell transports me to the end of summer, to the dog days where the heat shimmers and the dust in the road rises and seems to hang in the sultry air. It is then that the season’s tomatoes, fat and bulging globes of red fruit, release their scent in what always seems to me an impromptu act of fragrant pleasure.
The smell of the tomato leaf is precise and yet is impossible to nail down with any accuracy; as with a geranium leaf there is a green/acidic vegetal smell and a nearness to turpentine or pine, plus a hint of almost-acrid dust or chalk resin. The smell is sharp and suspenseful—one can tell the state of ripeness of the fruit, or so it seems, from the high pitch of this aroma. Its particular odor is due to an aromachemical of a type that also causes the smell from the geranium leaf.
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