Scent of Fresh Evergreens

Walk into a wreath-making facility during the pre-holiday season and the scent is overwhelmingly wonderful.

Scent of Fresh Evergreens

Scent of Fresh Evergreens

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Scent of Fresh Evergreens

Scent of Fresh Evergreens

All that fresh-cut noble fir, pine, cedar, cypress and juniper perfumes the Air and transports you to the deep woods on a summer morning, or to the delights of childhood holidays. And it's true: nothing is so evocative, so potent in the memory process, as scent.

But what gives the fresh evergreens in holiday wreaths, garland, swags and centerpieces their signature fragrances? In general terms, these are greens with balsamic properties: gummy resins with pleasant scents. In chemical terms, it's acids and phenols, or aromatic hydrocarbons, found in the needles, stems and wood of evergreens. Pine and cedar, including cypress, juniper and have the highestconcentrations of terpene alcohols and aromatic hydrocarbons, ethers, and esters. Adding to the redolence of these greens are abiatic acid in plicatic acid in pine and cedar.

These substances accomplish more than producing scent. These substances can kill germs and bacteria and repel insects. There's a reason that so many household cleaners involve pine oil, and that cedar chips are used for dog beds.

Today's fascination with essential oils and aromatherapy involves the same oils and chemicals that make the fragrant fresh evergreens so appealing in holiday decorating. Essential oils are obtained by the steam distillation of needles or scales, twigs and even cones of the fragrant evergreen species. These are used in aromatherapy; as scents in Massage, bath, and room-deodorizing unitoils; as cleaning products and disinfectants; and, in the case of pine oil, as a lubricant for small clockwork instruMents.

Wood from Western red cedar, Alaskan yellow cedar and other cedars contains a potent insecticidal compound which makes it useful in repelling and killing even Clothes moths.

Yet another fragrant association of the balsamic-type plants is incense. While joss sticks and other household incense products are familiar to many, there's also the incense used by liturgical churches. The best incense is resin-based, using both the powdered resin of balsamic trees and essential oils in its composition.

Scent of Fresh Evergreens