Ever smelled a scent that seems like it’s dripping in honey? There may be a touch of black locust in there. The tall tree – native to America, and great for furniture-making incidentally! – offers us intensely fragrant, creamy white blossoms, a little like orange blossom, which are particularly powerful at dusk. They’re also edible, should you ever find yourself in front of the actual tree (Robinia pseudoacacia). Bees love these intoxicating blooms: when you taste ‘acacia honey’, this is the tree whose pollen the bees have dipped into. Why black locust? Because when the flowers are over – and their perfume’s breathed its last – black seedpods emerge…
Smell black locust in:
Lanvin Clair de Jour