Linked to Linden:A Fragrance Takes Heart

In Central Park, on Mother's Day, after a solid week of rain, the lindens and lilacs are leafing and flowering out, and I am in a special state of Spring Giddiness reserved especially for this time of year.

Several Springs ago, after a particularly strenuous set of meetings, I emerged, exhausted, from the nearest subway to a scent reminiscent of....

Reminiscent of something I could not quite account for, but that was powerful and profound beyond words.

Without thinking, I followed my nose across the street and into the park, where I stood under the trees in question and reeled with joy and relief. Stress dissolved while waves of well-being and wonder washed over me. It was as if an abacus-of-the-emotions began recounting -- or rather, reliving -- every encounter with this fragrance from pre-verbal to most recent. Clearly, this was the tree that bloomed behind an old boyfriend’s country house. But it was also so much more.

Determined to know what and why, I returned to the park with my Smithsonian Handbook of Trees guide...and identified…American Linden! Aha! The French use linden flowers (also known as lime blossoms) to make tilleul, a soothing tea that, accompanied by a madeleine, launched Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past.

Being less prolific and more consumer-oriented, I proceeded directly to Whole Foods to purchase linden leaf tea and Provence Sante’s pure linden perfume. Subsequently, a fragrance counter sniff test at Saks yielded the info I sought: Linden is an active ingredient in Evyan's White Shoulders, a perfume my mother and grandmother had worn from my earliest days.

And an olfactory lesson that this winetaster had always known was driven deeper home: No sense travels more quickly or directly to our memories and emotions than smell, which bypasses the reasoning part of the brain and heads straight to the limbic system.

Much more on the sense of smell, how it works, and why it’s key to happiness, health, learning and love can be found at Coming to Your Senses, in upcoming Senses Report posts, and in an olfaction chapter I co-authored with Kevin Zraly for The Complete Wine Course, to be released by Sterling this September.

For now, the linden trees are in bloom! I encourage you to stand beneath them and BREATHE. And I hope you will fill your days and nights with aromas that keep your memories and desires alive.

Warmly and looking forward,

Wendy Dubit and The Senses Bureau