27-Apr London’s April Perfume Trail

There is also some variation among the shrubs with Vibunums being the heavyweights, producing rich, complicated sweet perfumes. Ceonothus flowers, with their many different varieties, are usually sweet and musky. Flowering currants tend to have more spice and the Winter hazel Corylopsis smells of cowslips. Mexican orange, and any remaining Mahonia, smells of orange and lily of the valley respectively.

Trees are not generally known for their insect attracting odours, as most are wind pollinated, but there are exceptions. Although most magnolias and ornamental cherries throw no scent, some do. The Yoshino cherry and bird cherry are both almond-scented. Some crab apples produce a light, sweet smell even when the flowers are still in the bud. Orchards are of course the best places to enjoy the evocative smell of apple blossom. More unusual smells in trees are the vanilla-scented Azara and medicinal scent of balsam poplars.

The rare early purple orchid has arguably the most unusual scent. It is said to start with vanilla, go on to goat and end in perspiration. This might explain why, even though it is one of the most beautiful flowers of April, it has never suffered from being picked for vases.

On grassy slopes, it is worth seeking out violets, primroses and cowslips for their scents. The cowslip has been described by some as a mixture of aniseed and wintergreen. This smell is also emitted from the root of the plant.

The fleeting, unique odour of violets was enjoyed by Shakespeare, who made several references to inhaling the smell whilst lying on a bank of wild violets. Fortunately, this can still be done on slopes such as White Down on the North Downs, where large patches of white and purple scented violets still exist. A variety of other familiar scents, include onion in ramsons and garlic in jack-by-the-hedge. Other musky scents are found in herb robert, red deadnettle and wild strawberry and of course gorse still smells strongly of coconuts.

The most complicated of all scents is often put down to the wallflower. The first draught is said to be pure violets. It can then go on to exhibit elements of rose, orange and hawthorn. They used to be called ‘handflowers’, on account of them being used in wedding posies and may still be found growing wild on the walls of Waltham Abbey and Beddington Church. Their presence on old castle walls was said to be encouraged so that their scent drifted through the open windows into their musty interiors. We tend not to think of mosses and liverworts being scented having no reason to want to attract a pollinator but there is one noticeable exception worth looking for. This is the Great Scented or Snake liverwort Conocephalum conicum. At this time of year it looks like green snakeskin covering wet ground along the edges of streams. When crushed its “leaves” or thallus emits a strong spicy, even floral scent with elements of both turpentine and violets. Shady woods with streams running through them in south-west London are the best places to look for it.